GIFT    OF 
JANE  KoSATHER 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 


Contemporaneity  with  the  present  sets 
the  bounds  of  both  the  historic  past  and 
the  historic  future.  The  past  is  not  dead, 
the  future  not  unborn,  but  past  and  future 
alike  are  vital  incidents  of  life  now.  His- 
tory, what  but  organic  recapitulation  and 
preparation,  the  present's  consciousness  of 
its  all-including  self  ! 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

AN  INTRODUCTION 

TO  THC 

PHILOSOPHICAL  STUDY  Or  POLITICS 


ALFRED  H.  LLOYD 

AUTHOR  OF  "CITIZENSHIP  AND  SALVATION"    AND 
"DYNAMIC   IDEALISM  " 


ANN  ARBOR 

GEORGE  WAHR,  PCTBLISHER 

1899 


Copyright 

By  ALFRED  H.  LLOYD 

A.  D.  1899. 


PRCmCE. 


A  FINISHED  book  must  always  be  to  its 
author  only  a  program  for  future  work. 
Particularly  is  this  true  of  a  book  that  owes  its 
being  to  the  discussions  of  a  university  lecture- 
room.  Thus,  the  present  volume,  growing  out 
of  work  with  students  jn  political  philosophy 
and  the  philosophy  of  history  is  only  a  prepar- 
ation for  something  more  extensive  and  philo- 
sophically more  satisfying,  and  publishing  it  as 
I  do  for  the  use  of  my  own  students,  who  must 
always  be  more  devoted  to  thinking  than  to 
knowing,  I  would  have  it  viewed  in  no  other 
light. 

And  this  is  my  second  attempt  to  formulate 
a  view  of  history,  the  first  being  in  Citizen- 
ship and  Salvation.  *  If  the  present  formu- 
lation does  not  help  the  understanding  of  the 
earlier  one  I  shall  be  greatly  disappointed. 
The  view  itself  is   not   a  new  one,  but  an  in- 

*  Citizenship  and  Salvation,  or  Greek  and  Jew.  A  Study 
in  the  Philosophy  of  History.     Little  Brown  &  Co.     1897. 

261204 


6 ,  .      .     .    PREFACE. 

'  cfividtai's  statement  always  has  some  chance 

of  being  serviceable. 

A.  H.  L. 
Ann  Arbor,  Michigan, 

August,  1899. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Introduction 9 

Part  I. 

DATA  OF  HISTORY. 

CHAPTER 

I.    Time 21 

II.    Causation 37 

III.  Nature 54 

IV.  Individuality 59 

V.    Progress 80 

Part  II. 

SOCIETY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE. 

VI.    The  Group  in  General 97 

VII.    The  Human  Group  or  Society       ....  102 

VIII.    The  Double  Responsibility  of  Society  .     .  120 

IX.    The  Stages  of  Society's  Activity      .     .     .  131 
X.    The  Process  of  Society's  Alienation  from 

Itself 143 

XI.    The  Process  of  Society's  Restoration  to 

Itself 168 

Xn.    Progress  in  the  Activity  of  Society      .     .  201 


8  ,  CONTENTS, 

Parr  ill. 

HISTORICAL  STUDIES. 

XIII.  Reason  and  Religion 211 

XIV.  Good  and  Evil 222 

XV.     Revolution      . 234 

XVI.    The  Great  Man 24a 

Conclusion 249 

Index 253, 


PHILOSOPHY  or  HISTORY 


INTRODUCTION. 

PHILOSOPHY  is  always  to  be  distinguished 
from  science.  Science,  judged  according 
to  her  own  account  of  herself,  is  the  interest 
in  knowledge  just  for  knowledge's  sake,  but 
philosophy  is  interested  in  knowledge  not  as 
mere  knowledge  but  as  motive.  According  to 
philosophy  knowledge  must  be  more  than 
formally  true  and  consistent;  it  must  be  also 
liberative.  Knowledge  for  knowledge's  sake 
is  necessarily  abstract;  or,  if  seeming  concrete, 
it  is  so  with  reference  to  something  to  which 
the  knower  is  denied  any  vital  relation,  and  to 
be  concrete  on  these  terms  is  to  reach  the  very 
summits  of  abstraction.  Only  knowledge  as 
the  truth  that  sets  you  free,  that  moves  not- 
the  knowing  but  the  living  and  acting  self  to 
expression,  is  strictly  concrete.  The  philos- 
opher, just  in  view  of  his  interest  in  acknowl- 
edge that^  is,  liberative  and  concrete  is^to^be 


10  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

classed  with  the  seekers  after  the  wisdom  of 
life,  with  the  laborers  and  the  reformers  in  so- 
ciety, with  those  whose  little  knowledge  is 
ever  a  great  striving  and  whose  striving  never 
fails  to  awaken  the  wish  for  greater  knowledge. 
His  seeking  for  knowledge  is  their  seeking  be- 
come special  and  intense  and  responsible  not 
to  any  limited  sphere  of  activity  but  to  the 
universe.  If  he  turns  to  science — and  he  al- 
ways dees  and  always  must — it  is  solely  that 
he  may  apply  and  animate  scientific  ideas. 

Of  course  scientific  ideas  can  not  be  applied 
and  animated  until  all  the  separate  sciences 
are  made  fully  responsible  to  each  other,  until 
they  have  been  tested,  each  one  and  all  of 
them,  as  theories  of  the  universe,  or  finally 
until  they  have  been  brought  under  a  single 
organizing  and  transfiguring  idea,  but  in  spite 
of  this  duty  to  interpret  and  organize  the 
sciences  the  philosopher  never  loses  his  inter- 
est in  a  truth  that  liberates.  The  history  of 
philosophy  is  but  a  record  of  the  ideas,  both  in 
their  temporal  sequence  and  in  their  logical 
relations,  that  have  been  the  central  and  con- 
trolling motives  of  man's  progress. 

But  the  philosophy  of  history,  which  is  the 
concern  of  this  book,  is  not  exactly  the  criti- 


INTRODUCTION.  II 

cism  and  interpretation  of  a  particular  science 
in  the  light  of  a  theory  of  the  universe,  as 
what  has  been  said  so  far  might  seem  to  im- 
ply. It  is  not  this,  however,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  history  is  to  be  regarded  rather  as 
a  method  in  all  the  sciences  than  as  a  science 
by  itself.  True,  when  we  speak  of  history,  we 
usually  understand  that  the  account  of  man's 
progress  and  civilization  is  intended,  but  it  is 
true  also  that  the  history  of  man,  although  a 
special  branch  of  investigation,  is  after  all  only 
a  means  or  a  method  in  the  science  of  politics. 
To  man  the  story  of  his  own  achievements  is 
so  absorbmg  that  he  allows  himself  for  a  time 
to  be  diverted  from  the  end  that  the  story 
really  has  in  view,  but  this  diversion  neither 
prevents  the  ultimate  subordination  of  the  his- 
tory of  civilization  to  the  science  of  politics, 
nor  makes  the  relation  of  the  two  in  any  essen- 
tial way  different  from  that  of  any  history  to 
any  science.  Accordingly,  although  the  direct 
interest  here  is  to  be  in  the  peculiar  history  of 
man  and  particularly  in  the  history  of  civilized 
man,  and  although  the  chief  illustrations  of 
such  principles  as  may  be  brought  forward  are 
to  be  taken  from  man's  history,  any  reader, 
who  fails  to  find,  at  least  between  the  lines,  a 


12  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

philosophy  of  history  in  a  more  general  sense, 
will  have  failed  to  get  all  that  this  book  is 
meant  to  contribute. 

To  examine  history  philosophically,  as  the 
foregoing  account  of  philosophy  implies,  is  to 
examine  the  fundamental  data  of  history,  the 
general  facts  or  the  general  principles  that 
every  historian  takes  for  granted  or  is  very 
likely  to  take  for  granted,  and  in  the  examina- 
tion to  determine  how  far  they  are  really  and 
consistently  thinkable.  The  philosopher  of 
history,  like  the  philosopher  in  general,  must 
see  history  as  something  in  which  he  and  his 
fellows  have  had,  have,  and  are  to  have  an 
active  share.  He  must  be  able  to  say  of  his- 
tory: ''That  am  I"  or  "That  are  we,"  and 
because  his  responsibility  is  very  broad  and 
very  deep  he  can  not  do  this  without  the  most 
thoroughgoing  criticism.  The  mere  story  may 
interest  or  entertain  him,  but  it  can  not  move 
him,  until  it  is  found  to  be  perfectly  rational, 
or  until,  as  the  same  thing,  it  reflects  his  life 
and  draws  him  into  itself.  Not  only  must  he 
be  able  to  rationalize  his  history  as  a  series  of 
events  but  also  he  must  know  what  history  as 
such  is,  what  its  meaning  to  experience  and 
what  its  place  in  the  universe.     The  historian, 


INTRODUCTION.  13 

for  example,  is  ordinarily  content  to  leave  un- 
examined the  facts  of  time,  causation,  individ- 
uality, progress,  but  the  philosopher,  eager 
fully  to  understand  history,  can  find  no  things 
so  important  and  so  absorbing. 

Some  have  insisted  that  the  philosophy  of 
history  has  to  busy  itself  with  universal  his- 
tory and  this  is  without  doubt  true,  but  there  is 
the  intensive  as  well  as  the  extensive  way  of 
studying  universal  history.  Determine  what 
time  is,  what  an  event  in  time  is,  what  causa- 
tion and  individuality  and  progress  are,  and 
what  society  is,  and  universal  history  is  bound 
to  stand  before  you.  Of  course  to  reach  these 
determinations  you  need  all  the  evidence  or 
illustration  from  actual  historical  records  that 
you  can  command,  but  the  philosophy  of 
history  itself  is  free  from  any  necessity  of  a 
complete  record  of  history.  The  case  is  pos- 
sibly somewhat  like  that,  familiar  to  the  biolo- 
gist, of  the  organism  that  recapitulates  its  own 
evolution  but  not  fully  and  not  literally.  As 
organic  life  is  greater  than  any  special  stages 
of  its  own  growth,  so  history  as  an  affair  of 
events  and  of  individuals  in  general  is  greater 
than  any  existing  record. 

The  objection  is  often  raised  that  to  assume, 


14  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

as  philosophy  does,  that  history  can  be  reduced 
to  a  formula,  that  is  to  say,  that  history  is  the 
manifestation  of  a  law,  not  the  mere  achieve- 
ment of  man  living  in  the  past  and  struggling 
against  all  sorts  of  obstacles,  is  to  rob  human 
activity  of  spontaneity  and  responsibility,  but 
this  objection  is  certainly  very  shallow  or  very 
near-sighted,  for  exactly  the  opposite  must  be 
r  ue.  Thus,  spontaneity  and  responsibility  are 
certainly  affairs  wholly  of  the  present,  not  of 
the  past,  and  just  for  the  sake  of  the  present, 
that  the  present  may  be  free,  having  some- 
thing to  guide  its  activity  and  to  establish  its 
experience,  it  is  necessary  that  the  past  should 
appear  in  no  other  light  than  that  of  a  law. 
Had  not  those  who  have  gone  lived  in  a  law, 
and  were  we  now  unable  to  know  the  law  in 
which  they  lived,  our  freedom  would  be  about 
as  empty  and  as  useless  as  could  possibly  be 
imagined.  Moreover,  if  it  is  true,  as  we  all 
believe,  nay,  as  we  all  know,  that  through  the 
course  of  organic  life,  or  more  narrowly  of 
human  progress,  the  all-pervading  and  all- 
controlling  idea  has  been  to  rationalize  exper- 
ience, most  assuredly  there  is  no  cause  even 
for  the  past  to  complain  and  much  less  for  any 
of  us  to  complain  in  its  behalf,  when  the  life 


INTR  OD  UCTION.  1 5 

that  was  is  found  to  have  been  rational  or 
according  to  some  law.  The  present,  finding 
the  past  a  lawful  past,  does  but  say  to  those 
that  were:  ''You  have  builded  even  better 
than  you  knew;  the  longing  for  law,  for  unity, 
in  your  life  was  no  idle  longing,  since  what 
you  sought  I  find  to  have  been  fulfilled." 
Where  motive  and  result  are  one,  freedom 
need  not  be  questioned. 

And  also  this  is  to  be  said  here,  although  in 
later  pages  the  matter  will  have  to  be  treated 
at  greater  length.  The  life  of  the  past  and 
the  life  of  the  present  are  wrongly  thought  of 
as  two  lives,  as  different  or  unrelated.  Not 
those  that  are  now  gone  once  lived  and  we 
live,  but  they  and  we  are  living;  they  in  us 
and  we  with  them.  When,  looking  over  the 
past,  we  think  of  freedom  or  spontaneity  or 
responsibility  as  belonging  to  the  makers  of 
the  past,  we  are  in  a  very  real  and  a  very  im- 
portant sense,  in  a  sense  that  is  not  a  poetic 
fancy  but  a  wholly  prosaic  experience,  turning 
the  creatures  of  yesterday  into  our  own  con- 
temporaries. More  than  one  writer  has  been 
keen  enough  to  see  that  contemporaneity  sets 
the  temporal  bounds  of  history,  and  a  more 


1 6  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

important  principle  for  the  philosophy  of 
history  would  be  hard  to  find. 

It  is  Hegel,  I  think,  who  has  defined  the 
philosophy  of  history  as  comprehension  of  the 
logic  of  human  events,  and  with  this  defini- 
tion no  fault  can  be  found,  if  the  final  making 
of  history  be  recognized  as  the  true  philoso- 
pher's motive.  An  abstract  logic  is  one  thing; 
a  philosophy  of  history,  quite  another.  But, 
not  to  dwell  upon  this,  there  is  a  way  to  study 
history  philosophically  that  ought  to  be  men- 
tioned here,  although  it  is  not  to  be  the  way 
of  this  book.  Thus,  one  may  study  the 
philosophical  ideas,  that  have  been,  to  quote 
from  above,  "the  central  and  controlling 
motives  of  man's  progress,"  and  out  of  history 
as  wonderfully  and  compactly  told  in  them 
get  a  philosophy  which  at  least  for  depth  could 
not  be  surpassed.  This  deeper  study,  how- 
ever, is  not  to  be  undertaken  here.  My 
work  or  our  work  at  this  time  is  to  look 
directly  to  the  facts  of  actual  history,  not  to 
the  organizing  ideas  of  the  philosophers,  for 
illustration  of  its  principles. 

And  just  a  word  more  may  be  said  as  to  the 
method  to  be  followed.  In  Part  I,  attention 
will  be  given  to  a  careful  analysis  of  several  of 


INTRO  D  UCTION.  1 7 

the  fundamental  data  of  history,  time,  causa- 
tion, nature,  individuality,  and  progress;  in 
Part  II,  to  a  study  of  society  and  of  social 
evolution;  and  in  Part  III,  to  the  considera- 
tion of  such  special  problems  in  an  under- 
standing of  history  as  the  great  man,  the 
nature  and  function  of  evil,  the  conflict  of  the 
spiritual  and  the  secular,  and  the  origin  and 
justification  of  revolution.  And,  finally,  at 
the  end  will  be  undertaken  the  very  dangerous 
and  according  to  some — who  may  be  right — 
the  very  inartistic  labor  of  drawing  a  moral. 


Part  I. 
DATS  or   HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

TIME.* 

THAT  time  is  one  of  the  data  of  history  goes 
without  saying,  and  fully  to  comprehend 
history  one  must  know  just  what  time  is.  Is 
time  an  independent  thing,  external  to  the 
events  or  experiences  that  appear  in  it  or  is  it 
in  some  way  intrinsic  to  its  content?  Is  it  real 
in  and  of  itself,  even  when  empty,  or,  in  such 
reality  as  it  has,  is  it  dependent  on  the  nature 
of  things,  being  when  taken  for  itself  only  an 
abstraction  of  something  that  is  directly  and 
immediately  involved  in  the  very  relations  of 
things,  or  in  what  makes  and  determines  the 
things  themselves,  or  let  us  say  in  the  activity 
that  the  relations  of  things  presuppose?  Is  it, 
in  short,  a  mere  formal  condition  of  history,  or 
is  it  a  material  condition? 

Now,  unless  time  should  prove  to  be  some- 
thing wholly  by  itself  and  wholly  formal,  real 
even  when   empty  and   so  quite    external    to 

*This  chapter  has  already  been  published  in  large  part 
in  The  Philosophical  Review,  January,  1899. 


22  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

events,  to  discuss  it  abstractly,  as  I  am  now 
proposing  to  do,  is  to  engage  in  a  process  of 
vivisection,  which  is  always  injurious  if  not 
fatal.  Moreover,  in  this  chapter,  time  will  be 
found  to  be  dependent  instead  of  self-existent 
or  external  or  formal.  In  its  existence,  in  its 
peculiar  character  and  in  its  peculiar  function 
it  will  be  seen  to  be  determined  by  the  other 
data  of  history,  and  they  by  it.  So  at  the 
start  we  may  as  well  recognize  the  vivisection 
that  we  are  engaged  in,  and  with  the  recogni- 
tion postpone  any  final  conclusions  until  the 
data  of  history  as  a  living  whole  can  stand  and 
move  before  us.  But,  for  the  present,  upon 
just  what  grounds  is  the  self-existence  or  the 
formal  character  of  time  to  be  denied.-* 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  remarked 
that  our  question  as  to  whether  time  is  self- 
existent  or  dependent,  formal  or  material,  is 
only  a  special  case  of  the  general  inquiry,  with 
which  the  thought  of  modern  times  has  been 
long  imbued,  as  to  whether  the  one  and  the 
many,  unity  and  differences,  are  or  are  not 
functions  of  each  other.  Are  differences  es- 
sential to  unity  or  is  unity  an  abstract  some- 
thing that  is  quite  independent  of  the  differ- 
ences in  whatever  is  unified?     Of  course  in  the 


TIME.  i^ 

conception  of  an  organism  we  have  the  one 
and  the  many,  unity  and  differences,  presented 
to  us  as  interdependent  and  interdetermining, 
but  even  in  these  days  not  everybody  is  will- 
ing to  accept  all  the  consequences  of  this  con- 
ception. As  regards  time,  then,  it  is  only  one 
of  the  ways  or  media  through  which  differ- 
ences are  unified.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  an  ex- 
tremely physical  form  of  unification,  but  herein 
is  nothing  to  place  it  out  of  the  category  to 
which  I  have  just  now  assigned  it.  Space  is 
another  so-called  physical  form  of  unification, 
and  philosophy  is  still  asking  about  it  as  about 
time  and  as  about  unity  in  senses  much  less 
physical,  if  it  is  external  to  or  intrinsic  to  the 
things  that  it  unifies.  Our  present  problem, 
then,  is  no  peculiar  problem;  it  is  not  isolated; 
and  to  have  seen  it  in  its  larger  relations  or  in 
its  general  character  will  certainly  be  of  some 
help  in  its  solution. 

But  now  to  turn  directly  to  the  business  of 
this  chapter,  suppose  we  consider  the  conclu- 
sions that  would  naturally  spring  from  regard- 
ing time  as  self-existent  or  formal.  Four  con- 
clusions, that  all  merge  into  one  as  they  are 
understood,  have  seemed  to  me  worthy  of 
mention. 


24  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

In  the  first  place,  if  time  is  merely  formal, 
all  events  in  time  are  necessarily  external  to 
each  other  and  a  history  of  merely  dated  hap- 
penings, a  history  that  makes  no  study  of  laws 
or  of  causes,  or  of  an  organizing  process,  is 
justified.  Indeed,  no  other  history  than  that 
of  separate  events  with  dates  would  be  possi- 
ble. Simply,  to  appeal  at  once  to  the  general 
case,  if  you  make  the  unity  of  things  external 
to  their  differences,  you  are  bound  therewith 
to  separate  the  things  themselves;  and,  again, 
specifically,  if  you  make  time  external  to 
events,  you  turn  history  into  nothing  but  a 
broken  series.  I  say  a  broken  series,  for  con- 
tinuity even  in  the  most  physical  sense  would 
be  undiscoverable.  A  self-existent,  purely 
formal  time,  by  taking  continuity  to  itself, 
denies  it  to  the  mere  content  of  time. 

Secondly,  if  time  is  formal,  the  things  in 
time  are  sudden.  Here,  quite  evidently,  we 
have  but  another  way  of  viewing  the  isolation 
referred  to  in  the  foregoing  paragraph.  Na- 
tions, men,  institutions,  are  to  be  thought  of, 
as  if  rising  up  out  of  nothing  and  disappearing 
as  suddenly  as  they  come,  and  whatever  is  at 
any  time  is  only  exactly  that  particular  thing 
which    it    is,   being  without   any  changing  or 


TIME.  25 

adapting  or  differentiating  power  or  nature  to 
relate  it  to  other  things.  No  doubt  we  are 
sometimes  given  to  Hving  as  if  time  were  only 
a  formal  condition  of  life,  but  the  result  is  to 
make  the  days  pass  without  any  achievement 
on  our  part,  life  for  us  being  as  empty  as  the 
time  that  merely  contains  it,  and  to  make  such 
changes  as  do  occur  the  work  of  a  brutal 
chance  or  a  lawless  miracle.  And,  similarly, 
in  a  formal  time  history  is  no  record  of  achieve- 
ment, but  a  record  of  only  sudden  happenings 
or  miraculous  interventions. 

In  other  words,  thirdly,  if  time  is  formal,  the 
events  in  time  are  naturally  and  necessarily 
under  the  control  of  some  wholly  external  and 
therefore  of  some  wholly  arbitrary  agency.  To 
a  people,  for  example,  subject  to  some  abso- 
lute monarch  or  to  some  infallible  church, 
where  monarch  or  church  get  their  authority 
from  a  world  or  a  nature  altogether  alien  to 
this  world  and  to  human  nature,  time  is  a 
mere  form,  the  present  having  no  significance 
and  the  past  and  the  future  being  unreal  just 
because  past  and  future.*     What  wonder  that 

*When  time  is  self -existent  and  formal  the  present  is  only 
the  absolute  durationless  now,  the  past  is  the  wholly  gone  and 
the  future  simply  and  only  that  which  has  not  yet  come.  See 
also  my  Dynamic  Idealism^  ch.  xii:  "Time." 


26  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

through  the  middle  ages  the  things  of  time 
were  said  to  be  illusory  and  predictions  of  the 
millenium  were  very  common  and  the  real  or 
the  spiritual  was  made  altogether  opposed  to 
the  temporal  ! 

But,  fourthly,  in  the  illusory  character  of 
time,  that  necessarily  follows  from  making  it 
formal  or  external  or  self-existent,  lies  perhaps 
the  most  serious,  the  most  thoroughly  con- 
demning conclusion  of  any  that  have  been 
mentioned.  Of  course  the  isolation  of  events 
from  each  other,  the  sanction  of  chance  or 
miracle,  and  the  positive  recognition  of  a  con- 
trolling agency  without  are  condemnatory 
enough,  but  for  my  own  part  I  find  the  notion 
of  time,  or  of  anything  else  for  that  matter,  as 
an  illusion  peculiarly  offensive.  The  other 
conclusions  stood  for  the  moment  without 
question,  but  here  the  need  of  a  radically 
different  view  of  time  is  absolutely  imperative. 
To  find  an  illusion  is  hopelessly  to  unsettle  the 
point  of  view  from  which  it  is  found  and  to  en- 
force adoption  of  another  point  of  view.  Sum- 
marily, if  time  is  ever  an  experience,  then  the 
real  and  even  the  spiritual  must  be  temporal. 
But  the  real  or  the  spiritual,  you  remind  me, 
must   be  eternal.     Very  true,    and   in  conse- 


TIME.  27 

quence  there  must  be  a  sense  in  which  the 
temporal  and  the  eternal  are  not  mere  oppo- 
sites,  or  mere  negatives,  of  each  other.  And 
can  we  not  find  this  sense?  Can  we  not  bring 
eternal  spirit  into  the  temporal?  Can  we  not 
find  in  time,  not  something  that  is  self-existent, 
for  the  self-existence  ends  in  time  as  an  illusion, 
but  something  that  will  show  time  to  be  only 
an  abstraction  of  some  essential  character  in 
the  sphere  of  the  real? 

To  make  time  essential  to  the  real  is  to 
relate  events  positively  or  originally,  to  do 
^  away  with  all  sudden  beginnings  and  endings, 
to  find  the  control  of  changes  not  in  an  exter- 
nal and  therefore  arbitrary  agency  but  in  the 
actual  nature  of  that  which  is  controlled,  in 
an  indwelling  and  only  self-realizing  process  of 
things,  and  above  all  to  make  both  the  past 
and  the  future  actual  in  the  present  and  at  one 
with  it.  Obviously  a  self-controlling  process, 
a  process  that  has  its  own  determinations 
within  itself,  within  its  own  conditions,  can 
manifest  only  such  differences  as  are  organic- 
ally, that  is  to  say  concretely  related,  and  it  can 
have  only  such  a  past  and  such  a  future  as  are, 
not  external  to  the  present,  and  so  illusions, 
but  actual   contents  of   the  present.     A  self- 


28  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

controlling  process  at  every  moment  of  its 
expression  must  both  recapitulate  its  past  and 
anticipate  its  future. 

What  the  foregoing  means  must  be  found, 
at  least  in  part,  in  that  to  which  it  is  anti- 
thetical. Negatives  always  afford  important 
help  in  interpretation.  Still  a  direct  or  positive 
statement  always  needs  more  than  mere  state- 
ment. So,  just  what  are  related  events  ? 
What  is  involved  in  the  elimination  of  sudden 
changes }  How  can  control  be  from  within  } 
And  what  is  it  to  have  past  and  future  also 
present .?  These  questions  I  can  answer  only 
preliminarily  in  this  place,  but  I  may  turn  my 
present  labor  into  a  pertinent  illustration  and 
say  that  I  can  not  but  hope  that  the  explana- 
tions to  be  given  here  will  have  in  themselves, 
as  something  not  altogether  intangible  and  unin- 
telligible, the  future  that  subsequent  pages  are 
to  define  more  fully. 

Thus,  related  events,  which  are  of  course 
sequent,  are  in  principle  like  the  successive 
experiences  that  one  has  when  taking  a  walk. 
The  stages  of  one's  progress,  whether  future 
or  past,  are  always  present  in  the  form  of 
actual  relations  to  the  sphere  of  the  activity. 
The  walking   is  somehow  only  the    temporal 


TIME.  29 

expression  of  spatial  relations  or  the  fulfil- 
ment of  coexistences  in  sequences  or  of 
sequences  in  coexistences,  and  this  expression 
or  fulfilment  would  be  impossible,  were  there 
not  an  actual  and  complete  organic  unity  in 
all  the  differences  involved.  The  action,  I 
say,  or  the  walking  can  be  but  the  realization 
of  already  existing  and  ever  existing  relation- 
ships. Were  the  relationships  that  are  ex- 
pressed not  rooted  in  some  permanent  organ- 
izing unity,  were  they  not  existing  and 
persistent,  it  is  hard  to  see,  nay,  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  see  how  the  activity  could  ever  come 
about  or  how  the  agent  of  it  could  ever  know 
what  he  was  doing.  Merely  that  he  may 
know  what  he  is  doing  an  agent  needs  an 
environment  as  a  sphere  of  coexisting  things 
or  objects  in  whose  relations  he  has  repeated 
to  him  the  past  moments  of  his  progress  and 
foretold  the  future  moments. 

And  in  the  circumstances  of  our  illustration 
we  see  also  what  is  meant  by  the  elimination 
of  sudden  changes.  The  peculiar  relation  be- 
tween the  sequent  and  the  coexistent  that  the 
conditions  of  activity  evidently  require  makes 
continuity,  as  that  alone  in  which  the  two  can 
be  at  one  with  each  other,  a  necessity.     Indeed 


30  PHIL  O  SO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

continuity  is  only  a  purely  physical  conception 
of  relationship.  Here  we  do  well  to  broaden 
our  view  by  thinking  of  the  long  process  of 
evolution,  which  is  not  essentially  different 
from  that  of  walking.  The  larger  facts  of 
evolution  will  help  us  to  a  still  clearer  concep- 
tion both  of  the  relationship  of  events  and  of 
the  continuity  of  change.  Evolution  has  out- 
come not  only  in  a  creature  that  has  •  'evolved' ' 
but  also  in  a  vitally  related  environment  by 
which  the  creature's  past  and  the  creature's 
future  are  made  concretely  present.  More- 
over a  consciousness  of  the  environment  is  as 
necessary  a  condition  of  the  evolutional  pro- 
cess as  was  the  pedestrian's  recognition  of  his 
surroundings  a  necessary  condition  of  his  pro- 
gress. Evolution  needs  consciousness,  and 
consciousness,  in  our  larger  illustration  as  in 
our  smaller,  means  both  a  relational  unity  of 
coexistences  and  a  continuity  of  sequences. 

Also  in  the  primary  importance  of  conscious- 
ness to  evolution  there  is  to  be  had  still 
another  view  of  what  now  interests  us.  In  a 
word,  life  and  consciousness  can  not  possibly 
be  thought  of  as  apart  from  each  other.  Con- 
sciousness, then,  is  as  original  as  life,  and  in 
their  common  origin  or,  as  the  same  thing,  in 


TIME.  31 

their  constant  contemporaneity  is  evidence  of 
their  unity.  Life,  because  it  is  Hfe,  is  con- 
scious. Consciousness  is  intrinsic  to  life;  it  is 
not  under  any  conditions  epiphenomenal.  To 
make  consciousness  a  sudden  appearance  in 
the  evolution-series  is  to  separate  it  always 
from  the  life  to  which  it  is  attached.  Some 
scientists,  whose  eyes  must  be  closed  to  their 
own  visions,  seem  to  enjoy  the  strange  conceit 
that  science,  as  the  best  expression  of  man's 
consciousness,  is  solely  for  science's  sake,  and 
the  same  blind  gazers,  as  if  unwittingly  cor- 
recting their  unseen  error,  have  been  wont  to 
raise  animals  to  man's  level  by  making  the 
animal  consciousness  also  epiphenomenal  or 
for  its  own  sake,  and  to  raise  the  still  * '  lower ' ' 
forms  of  life  to  the  animal's  level  by  denying 
consciousness  to  them  altogether;  but  the  very 
evolution  which  they  unwittingly  justify  would 
be  impossible  on  their  scheme.  Evolution 
demands  a  consciousness  or  if  you  will  a 
science  or  a  thought  or  a  mind  that  is  intimate 
with  the  nature  of  whatever  evolves. 

But  time  as  the  form  in  which  the  sequences 
of  evolution  appear  is  a  peculiar  condition  of 
consciousness,  so  that  in  identifying  life  and 
consciousness  we  do  in  just   so  far  make  time 


32  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

essential  to  reality.  True,  somebody  is  likely 
to  turn  upon  us  and  declare  that  life  itself  is 
not  essential,  that  life  began  in  time  by  some 
process  of  abiogenesis  or  spontaneous  genesis 
and  is  not  an  ultimate  fact  in  the  reality  of  the 
present  and  that  time  therefore  is  not  of  such 
a  nature  as  to  make  the  temporal  and  the  eter- 
nal one,  but  to  such  an  objector,  it  is  only  nec- 
essary to  reply  that  he  means  less  by  life  than 
we  do.  For  us  the  life  that  can  evolve  is  not 
the  special  endowment  of  an  isolated  body  or 
of  a  group,  large  or  small,  of  isolated  bodies; 
it  is  a  property  of  the  universe  as  single  and 
indivisible;*  and  with  life  so  established  and 
conscious  in  and  of  itself  the  idea  of  time  as 
essential  to  reality  is  unassailable. 

Life,  or  action,  in  its  temporal  sequences  is 
but  the  continuous  expression  of  the  persistent 
relationships  of  coexistences.  This  is  a  formula 
that  is,  confessedly,  not  pleasant,  but  it  is  quite 
intelligible  to  all  who  walk  and  to  all  also  who, 
knowing  the  story  of  their  evolution,  look  out 
upon  their  present  environment,  which  is  so 
obviously  at  once  the  recapitulated  but  con- 
temporized past  and  the  anticipated  but  con- 

*In  subsequent  pages  special  attention  is  to  be  given  to 
the  view  of  life  that  is  here  only  asserted.  See  the  chapter 
on  ''Individuality.*' 


TIME.  33 

temporized  future.  And  that  life  under  this 
formula  is  self-determined  goes  now  without 
saying.  Simply  there  is  no  creation  to  make 
determination  from  without  necessary.  There 
is  neither  an  external  past  nor  an  external 
future  to  act  upon  the  present  and  make  it 
helpless.  But  of  the  need,  involved  in  mak- 
ing time  essential  to  reality,  of  finding  past 
and  future  actual  in  the  relations  of  the  pres- 
ent, more  may  be  said.  Perhaps  we  are  not 
accustomed  to  look  upon  a  creature's  environ- 
ment"^ as  its  past  and  future  organically  con- 
temporized with  the  present,  but  in  other  ways 
we  are  at  least  indirectly  familiar  with  the 
idea.  Memories  are  recognized  as  states  of 
mind  that  are  to  be  referred  to  present  organ- 
ically related  physiological  processes,  and  the 
same  is  true  of  prophecies.  Also  as  evolution- 
ists or  historians  we  are  wont  to  explain  the 
past  or  the  future  by  appealing  to  principles 
that  we  look  upon  as  independent  of  any  of 
the  distinctions  of  time.  Evolutionists  to-day 
are  relying  in  so  many  ways  on  mechanics,  on 
chemistry,  on  physics,  which  in  so  far  as 
''exact"  sciences   are  also  timeless  sciences; 

*  It  does  not  seem  necessary  for  me  to  say  here  that  as  I 
use  the  term  environment  I  would  have  it  all-inclusive.  Ob- 
viously a  creature's  own  body  is  a  part  of  its  environment. 


34  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

and  historians  use  nature  and  nature's  laws  in 
their  accounts  of  human  achievement  and 
progress.  That  laws,  however,  or  principles 
are  always  contemporizing  agencies,  bringing 
the  past  and  the  future  to  which  they  are  ap- 
plied into  the  present,  is  all  but  axiomatic. 
Thus  are  we  brought  back  to  the  view  of  en- 
vironment already  given,  since  environment  is 
not  only  the  sphere  of  life's  coexisting  condi- 
tions but  also,  as  an  object  of  consciousness, 
the  very  incarnation  of  a  more  or  less  clearly 
recognized  law.  In  a  formula,  environment  is 
only  the  actuality,  and  one  might  almost  say, 
the  substantiality  of  life's  contemporizing  law. 
The  biological  doctrine  of  recapitulation,  if 
taken  for  what  it  is  in  reality,  a  doctrine  of  a 
lawful  environment  as  well  as  of  the  organic 
unity  of  an  individual  creature,  offers  us  a  very 
good  concluding  indication  of  what  is  meant 
by  time  as  essential  to  reality  or  by  any  of  the 
consequences  of  the  essence-theory  of  time,  by 
the  relation  of  events,  the  continuity  of  change, 
the  indwelling  nature  of  control  or  determina- 
tion, and  the  contemporaneity  of  past  and  fu- 
ture with  the  present. 


TIME.  35 

And  now  again  the  question,  with  which  this 
chapter  began:  What  is  time?     Plainly  time  is 
nothing  in  itself.      An  abstract  definition  of  it, 
however,  may  be  derived  from  the  foregoing, 
although  I  should   almost  prefer  to  let  what 
has  been  said  stand  as   it  is  without  this  addi- 
tion.    Time  in   and  for  itself  alone,  time  as 
mere  duration,   is  definable   as  a  physical  or 
quantitative  abstraction  for  organic  unity  in  so 
far  as  organic  unity  involves  change;  or,  differ- 
ently and   somewhat   metaphorically  put,  it  is 
the  change  that  is  inherent  in  the  organic,  pro- 
jected   upon   the   plane  of   mere    measurable 
quantity.     Similarly,  space  is  the  permanence 
of  the  organic  on  the  same  plane.      But,  in  a 
statement    that    is    possibly  a  shade  less  ab- 
struse, time  is  an  element  in   experience  that 
expresses  abstractly  at  once  the  necessity — the 
past — and  the  opportunity — the  future — that  a 
world  of  related  differences  naturally  affords. 
Time,    then,   is   no    mere    form   of   life,   self-- 
existent  and  external;  it  is  even  a  force,  or  it 
is  a  phase  of  a  force,  in  application  of  which 
or   in    identification  with  which  life  consists. 
Those  who  live  do  not  live  in  time;  they  live 


36  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

time  itself,  they  use  time;   and  a  life  that  uses 
time  is  as  eternal  as  it  is  temporal.* 

*  Possibly  I  have  made  a  mistake  in  almost  assuming  in 
this  chapter  that  the  organic  and  the  real  are  literally  synony- 
mous terms.  One  has  to  assume  something,  however,  and  in 
another  book,  already  referred  to.  Dynamic  Idealism^  I  have 
considered  at  length  the  organic  nature  of  reality.  "Rela- 
tionship among  things  is  the  criterion  neither  of  a  life  nor  of  a 
mind  that  exists  apart  from  the  substance  of  the  universe.  It 
is,  however,  the  criterion  of  substance  itself,  and  as  the  cen- 
tral truth  about  things  it  bears  this  witness:  The  universe  it- 
self lives;  the  universe  itself  thinks.  ^^ 


CHAPTER  II. 


CAUSATION. 


7TS  a  matter  of  form  I  may  begin  this  second 
'^  chapter  by  saying  that  our  idea  of  causa- 
tion, the  second  datum  of  history  to  occupy 
us,  has  already  been  determined  by  the  idea 
of  time  to  which  we  are  now  committed;  and 
this,  although  as  has  been  suggested  each  new 
study  that  we  enter  upon  can  not  but  react 
upon  all  that  precedes  and  give  to  it  a  deeper  as 
well  as  a  clearer  meaning. 

Heat  expands.  Columbus  discovered  Amer- 
ica. The  University  of  Michigan  was  founded 
by  an  act  of  1837.  The  earth  revolves  about 
the  sun.  Here  are  a  number  of  statements  of 
causal  relationship  that  in  various  ways  illus- 
trate what  we  have  now  to  explain.  Every 
one  of  them,  at  least  as  commonly  understood, 
amounts -to  an  assertion  that  some  individual 
force  or  agency,  as  an  antecedent  in  time,  has 
in  and  of  itself,  produced  some  subsequent 
specific  or  individual   change   in  the  order  of 


38  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

things.  Even  in  the  last  of  the  four  cases, 
which  is  the  case  that  might  be  most  in  doubt, 
the  sun  is  very  likely  to  to  be  regarded  as  a  body 
that  individually  controls  the  earth's  move- 
ment; or,  if  not  the  sun,  then  some  other 
great  central  body,  indefinitely  remote,  to 
whose  force  the  solar  system  as  a  whole  is 
made  subject. 

But  causation,  if  individualistic,  tempor- 
ally sequent,  and  arbitrarily  productive  or 
creative,  is  a  conception  that  involves  very 
serious  objections.  In  fact  the  objections  are 
so  serious  that  upon  being  properly  indicated 
they  condemn  the  conception  itself  absolutely. 

Any  individual  that  is  in  itself  a  cause  of 
something  other  than  itself  can  not  but  be  view- 
ed as  itself  the  effect  of  some  other  cause,  while 
that  which  it  has  effected  must  in  its  turn  be  a 
cause  of  something  not  itself.  In  other 
words,  whatever  is  externally  or  arbitrarily 
productive  is  also  externally  or  arbitrarily  pro- 
duced; and,  conversely,  whatever  is  externally 
or  arbitrarily  produced  is  also  externally  or 
arbitrarily  productive.  Thus,  in  the  sense 
already  pointed  out,  we  can  never  say  that 
heat  expands  or  that  the  University  was 
founded  in  1837  or  in  general  that  a  causes  b 


CAUSATION.  39 

without  at  once  forcing  attention  upon  an 
indefinite,  nay,  an  infinite  series  of  causes  and 
an  infinite  series  of  effects.  But  strangely 
enough,  unless  it  is  not  strange  but  natural 
that  errors  should  eventually  correct  them- 
selves, either  one  of  the  two  series  amounts 
to  nothing  more  or  less  in  the  end  than  the 
universe  as  a  whole  to  which  the  first  observed 
cause  and  its  assigned  effect  alike  belong. 
Moreover,  whenever  in  practice  the  two  series, 
that  are  also  identical,  are  presented  to 
thought,  the  ultimate  cause  and  the  ultimate 
effect,  although  perhaps  regarded  as  separate 
individual  existences,  are  always  conceived  in 
terms  of  a  nature  or  principle  that  is  alto- 
gether independent  of  either  spatial  or  tem- 
poral limitations.  The  first  cause  and  the 
last  effect  are  always,  each  of  them,  only  the 
inner  nature  or  the  inner  law  that  the  two 
series  have  manifested.  They  are  at  once 
terms  in  the  series  and  all-including  summaries 
of  the  series.  To  give  a  very  simple  illustra- 
tion, in  childhood,  youth,  manhood,  and  old 
age,  there  is  presented  a  series,  which  has  for 
both  its  first  and  its  last  terms,  as  we  conceive 
them  ordinarily,  rather  a  conception  of  human 
nature   in   the   abstract   than   anything   else. 


40  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

The  child  as  father  of  the  man  is  the  man  not 
yet  defined,  the  principle  from  whose  expres- 
sion the  mature  man  is  to  spring,  and  old  age 
is  but  a  defined  manhood  returning  to  the 
spirit  of  its  childhood.  Both  childhood 
and  old  age  show  human  nature  at  one  with 
itself,  and  to  either  of  them  we  may  look,  not 
for  mere  terms  in  the  series,  but  for  the  prin- 
ciple or  the  spirit,  independent  of  distinctions 
of  place  and  time,  that  controls  because 
including  the  whole  series.  But  this  curious, 
yet  natural,  outcome  of  the  notion  that  causa- 
tion is  individualistic  reduces  any  statement  of 
casual  relationship  to  the  simple  if  not  empty 
formula  that  the  whole  is  the  cause  of  itself 
or  that  a  real  cause  and  its  real  effect  are 
identical.  Therefore,  whatever  else  may  be 
implied,  causation  is  not  individualistic. 

Of  course  the  individual,  that  is  at  once 
arbitrarily  productive  and  arbitrarily  produced, 
is  only  the  isolated  and  sudden  event  of  the 
previous  chapter  in  different  clothes  and  the 
conclusion  about  causation  that  our  very  simple 
criticism  has  just  brought  us  to  is  equivalent 
exactly  to  our  organic  contemporization  of  the 
past  and  the  future  with  the  present.  Then 
we  spoke  from  the  standpoint  of   time;    now. 


CAUSATION.  4f 

as  if  the  two  were  separable,  from  the  stand- 
point of  time's  content.  But,  clearly,  to 
identify  cause  and  effect  is  to  contemporize 
past  and  future. 

And  another  equally  interesting  way  of 
reaching  the  same  result  is  to  regard  directly 
and  specifically  the  objection  to  ever  identify- 
ing a  mere  temporal  antecedent  with  a  cause 
or  a  mere  temporal  consequent  with  an  effect. 
A  time  interval,  however  short,  between  a 
cause  and  its  effect  is  fatal  alike  to  one's  idea 
of  time  and  to  one's  idea  of  causation.  Not 
to  repeat  what  has  been  said  already,  the 
interval  can  never  be  anything  but  a  source  of 
possible  if  not  necessary  change  or  disturb- 
ance. An  antecedent  cause  can  not  be  fully 
responsible  for  its  effect.  A  subsequent  effect 
can  not  be  the  real  effect  of  its  cause.  Here 
we  have,  as  it  were,  a  criticism  that  is  inten- 
sive in  its  view  instead  of  extensive.  Instead 
of  looking  to  the  larger  whole  to  which  any 
cause  and  its  effect  must  belong,  we  are  now 
looking  to  what  a  cause  and  its  effect  within 
their  own  sphere  and  through  their  own  time 
must  include.  A  cause,  then,  that  deserts  its 
process  for  however  short  an  interval,  can  not 
be  sure  of  fulfilment,  or  whatever  results  from 


42  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

it  can  be  referred  to  it  only  if  it  is  **  ab- 
stractly conceived,"  as  Spinoza  would  say,  that 
is,  confusedly  identified  with  all  the  interven- 
ing influences  as  making  one  continuous  pro- 
cess. A  pistol-shot,  for  example,  may  and  it 
may  not  kill  a  man,  but  if  cause  and  effect  are 
really  separate  in  time,  any  treatment  of  the 
wound  would  be  at  best  only  a  game  of  chance 
if  not  absolutely  aimless  and  idle.  Indeed,  to 
express  the  case  at  its  extreme,  there  would 
be  quite  as  much  reason  for  anyone  who 
heard  a  pistol  fired  to  drop  dead  on  the  spot 
as  to  do  something  for  his  self-preservation. 
Whether  he  were  hit  or  not  would  be  an  im- 
pertinent consideration.  In  practical  life, 
however,  we  cannot  desert  for  a  single  moment 
what  we  are  doing  without  damaging  our 
achievement  and  we  certainly  can  not  suppose, 
as  so  often  we  seem  to,  that  nature  is  less  a 
servant  of  her  tasks  than  we  are  of  ours. 
True,  every  cause  has  an  effect,  every  effect  a 
cause,  but  a  cause  is  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  an  activity  and  its  effect  is  only  the  man- 
ifested conditions  of  this  activity.  Most 
assuredly  a  wounded  man  is  not  dead  until  he 
is  dead  and  he  lives  just  as  long  as  he  is  alive. 
Do  excuse   my  positive  inanity  here,  remem- 


CAUSATION.  43 

bering  that  the  fault  is  not  wholly  mine,  so 
long  as  others  of  my  race,  at  least  in  their 
minds,  insist  on  actually  killing  their  fellows 
before  they  are  dead  or — as  the  same  thing  in 
principle — making  them  live  sometimes  as  if 
after  and  sometimes  as  if  before  their  actual 
life-time.  Obviously  I  have  now  left  such 
cases  of  death  as  those  from  pistol-shots  and 
taken  a  more  general  view.  Deaths  and 
births  are  interests  of  historians — as  well  as 
of  doctors  and  relatives.  To  make  a,  an  ante- 
cedent, the  cause  of  ^,  a  consequent,  is  only 
the  general  case  under  which  falls,  as  special 
and  particular,  the  still  common  habit  of 
either  condemning  or  praising  men  who  lived 
and  died  years  or  centuries  ago  as  if  they  were 
responsible  to  life  as  it  is  known  today  or  as  if 
they  were  even  behind  instead  of  ahead 
of  their  own  times.  It  would  be  safe 
for  historians,  for  the  sake  of  their  history,  to 
remember  that  men,  never  being  isolated 
creatures,  never  can  be  either  behind  their 
times  or  ahead  of  their  times.  Time  and  its 
content  are  one,  not  two.  Both  the  history 
and  the  biology  of  today,  not  always  directly 
but  very  often  indirectly,  are  given  to  the 
offense,  the  anachronism,  of  separating  cause 


44  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

and  effect  in  time,  and  it  suffices  to  say  that 
just  as  long  as  they  offend  in  this  way  they  are 
making  the  processes,  which  concern  them, 
lawless,  irresponsible  processes,  the  study  of 
which  can  bear  no  fruit. 

That  a  temporally  antecedent  cause  is 
always  an  isolated  individual  is  an  axiom — 
may  I  not  now  call  it  that  ? — which  may  help 
to  give  unity  to  the  criticisms  that  have  been 
made  so  far,  but  before  taking  another  step  an 
accusation  that  may  be  brought  by  somebody 
must  be  met.  Perhaps  I  seem  to  have  been 
contradicting  myself.  Thus,  at  one  moment  I 
seem  to  have  insisted  on  dispensing  with  the 
distinction  of  time  and  at  the  next  to  have 
objected  strenuously  to  any  such  thing,  and 
this  appears  seriously  contradictory.  The 
organic  contemporization,  however,  of  past 
and  future  with  present,  for  which  I  have  been 
contending,  has  always  been  for  the  integrity 
of  historical  order,  not  for  its  overthrow.  No 
antecedent  is  cause  apart  from  its  whole  envi- 
ronment and  relating  it  to  its  whole  environ- 
ment is  exactly  what  effects  its  contemporiza- 
tion with  its  effect.  Not  Columbus,  in  1492, 
discovered  America,  but  Columbus  aided  by 
the  trade-winds  and  other  natural  agencies  of 


CAUSATION.  45 

1899;  or,  again,  in  1492  Columbus  discovered 
not  the  America  of  today  but  an  America  that 
was  only  the  '  *  other  world, ' '  which  had  become 
more  than  a  mere  spiritual  dream  in  Europe 
even  before  the  ships  sailed.  The  famous  voy- 
age had  only  its  own  motive  for  its  immediate 
result;  the  result  was  no  more  and  no  less 
than  its  motive.  It  became  more,  but  that  is 
another  story.  So,  returning,  I  say  that  my 
apparent  contradiction  was  only  apparent. 
The  past  and  the  future  are  relations,  or 
related  parts,  of  the  present;  they  are  not 
external  causes,  they  are  not  external  effects. 
Thirdly,  to  object  to  an  individualistic  and 
temporally  sequent  causation  because  it  is  also 
creational  is  to  be  only  just  a  little  bit  more 
commonplace  than  I  have  been  already. 
Commonplaces,  however,  are  the  business  of 
philosophy.  In  addition,  then,  to  what  has 
been  said  above,  causation  even  ceases  to  be 
causation  if  it  is  arbitrary;  the  effect  of  any 
cause  is  so  idle  or  so  useless  to  the  cause  itself, 
being  as  unmeaning  as  stones  to  a  man  asking 
for  bread  or  antiquities  to  speculators  in  stocks. 
Modern  science,  so  keenly  interested  in  a  law- 
ful nature,  has  been  established,  it  is  true, 
upon  the  familiar  principles  of  universal  causa- 


46  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

tion  and  the  uniformity  of  nature;  but  the 
effect  of  the  universality  and  uniformity,  which 
the  principles  assert,  has  been  to  reduce 
causation  itself  as  a  relation  between  two 
things  to  a  mere  formality  of  sequence  or 
coexistence.  For  science  causation  has  become 
rather  a  form  of  thought  than  anything  dis- 
covered or  discoverable  in  the  objective  world. 
A  lawful  nature,  dependent  on  uniformity  and 
universality,  on  conservation  and  indivisibility, 
has  forbidden  anything  even  distantly  sugges- 
tive of  creation. 

But,  if  causation  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as 
individualistic,  temporally  sequent,  and  crea- 
tional,  what  can  we  say  of  it.?  We  must  come 
to  some  definite  understanding  of  its  nature,  if 
for  no  other  reason,  at  least  for  the  sake  of  a 
comprehension  of  history,  in  which  it  has  such 
an  important  part.  True,  a  causation,  which 
puts  the  control  of  a  process  outside  of  the 
process  itself  or — in  words  amounting  to  essen- 
tially the  same  thing — which  identifies  cause 
and  effect  with  temporal  antecedent  and  tem- 
poral consequent,  is  offensive  to  thought;  but 
how  else  can  the  manifold  changes  of  the  world 
be  adequately  explained.'*  Merely  t  o  conclude 
that  cause  and  effect   are  contemporary  and 


CA  USA  TION.        ^  47 

materially  identical  is  anything  but  satis- 
factory. 

Causation,  the  causal  relationship,  as  is 
shown  by  the  use  that  modern  science  has 
made  of  it,  is  only  one  of  the  ways  in  which 
we  present  to  ourselves  the  unity  of  the  world. 
Accordingly,  when  we  identify  it  with  the 
world's  change  or  differentiation,  our  concep- 
tion of  it  must  depend  upon  whether  in  gen- 
eral we  think  of  unity  and  differences  as  mu- 
tually exclusive  or  as  intrinsic  to  each  other. 
If  unity  and  differences  exclude  each  other, 
then  causation  is  just  that  to  which  we  have 
been  objecting  so  positively,  but  if,  as  we  be- 
lieve, they  involve  each  other,  if  they  are  per- 
fect functions  of  each  other,  then  causation  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  organic  differentia- 
tion. In  organic  differentiation  the  whole  al- 
ways is  the  cause  of  itself,  the  positive  causa- 
tion consisting  only  in  the  consistent  or  re- 
sponsible expression  of  the  organic  relations 
or  in  the  interaction  of  parts  that  the  organic 
nature  implies.  For  brevity's  sake,  then,  I 
shall  hereafter  refer  to  causation  in  this  sense 
as  responsible  or  relational  in  distinction  from 
an  arbitrary  or  creational  causation. 

Now  exactly  what  our  relational  or  respon- 


48  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

sible  causation  amounts  to  can  be  seen  in  part 
at  least  by  reflection  upon  such  simple  cases 
of  change  or  differentiation  as  travel  and  mo- 
tion.* Travel  is  most  decidedly  something 
more  than  leaving  places  and  visiting  places; 
it  is  the  expression  of  already  existing  and 
never  ceasing  relations,  the  fulfilment  and 
maintenance  of  developed  interests.  And  it  is 
this  so  truly  that  we  are  able  to  say,  in  spite 
of  the  paradoxes,  that  a  traveller  always  is  at 
his  goal  even  when  he  starts,  his  future  as  a 
developed  relation  or  interest  being  concretely 
present,  and  at  his  starting  point  even  when 
he  arrives,  his  past  also  being  concretely  pres- 
ent. If  we  think  of  travel  in  any  other  way 
we  forget — do  we  noti* — what  we  are.  Only 
travellers  can  travel;  only  creatures  of  mani- 
fold interests  or  relations  can  ever  express  the 
differentiation  of  a  journey;  and  creatures  that 
have  such  interests  travel  in  spite  of  them- 
selves. Any  organism,  for  example,  is  born 
to  travel,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  can  not 
leave  home  behind  and  yet  must  ever  be  visit- 
ing new  places.      In   practical   life   some  seem 

*  Of  these  I  haVte  already  written  at  some  length  in  Dyna- 
mic Idealism  (see  Ch.  II.  "Change."),  but  a  little  repetition 
can  hardly  do  any  harm — especially  in  the  light  of  modern 
psychology,  which  makes  repetition  impossible! 


CA  USA  TION.  49 

to  travel  without  having  any  previous  relation 
to  the  places  they  visit  and  some  to  lose  their 
old  relations  when  they  leave  their  homes,  but 
the  seeming  is  only  a  seeming.  A  tellow- 
countryman  once  slapped  me  on  the  shoulder 
in  the  streets  of  Berlin  and  relying  on  my 
American  patriotism  walked  with  me  for  sev- 
eral blocks.  He  was  rejoiced  to  meet  me  and 
he  told  me  of  his  very  extensive  wanderings. 
''Regardless  of  cost"  he  had  gone  **from 
Rome  through  Florence  to  Venice  and  way 
stations,"  and  so  on,  and  each  place  that  he 
visited  had  or  had  not  ''met  his  expectations." 
That  was  his  formula  and  his  experiences  be- 
gan and  ended  with  it,  so  that  I  wondered 
what  could  have  brought  him  so  many  miles 
from  home.  His  money.?  Certainly  nothing 
else  seemed  to  relate  him  in  any  real  way  to 
what  he  had  come  to.  His  money  and  his 
formula  were  the  sole  motives  of  his  travel, 
since  they  alone  kept  him  at  home  even  in  his 
absence,  for  I  must  say  again  that  the  travel- 
ler can  express  in  his  journey  only  the  rela- 
tions that  he  has,  never  entering  a  strange 
place  nor  leaving  a  familiar  one. 

And  what  is  true  of  travel  is  true  of  motion. 
We  think  of  motion  as  the  expression  of  a  con- 


50  PHIL  OSO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

tinuous  series  of  positions,  but  just  because  it 
is  this  it  is  also  just  a  little  more  than  this. 
Any  position  in  the  series  involves  all  the 
others,  or  is  itself  real  only  through  its  rela- 
tion to  the  others,  so  that  the  motion  instead 
of  being  a  mere  succession  or  even  a  continu- 
ous succession  of  positions  is  the  expression 
or  realization  of  a  system  of  relations.  Ac- 
cordingly things  do  not  move,  that  is  to  say, 
motion  is  not  peculiar  to  things  as'  such,  as 
any  one  who  has  reflected  at  all  on  the  rela- 
tivity of  motion  has  realized,  but  motion  is  the 
relations  of  things  in  expression. 

Change  of  any  sort,  finally,  is  of  the  same 
character.  As  much  the  motive  as  the  end, 
as  much  the  condition  as  the  result  of  a  life 
that  is  essentially  organic,  it  can  never  be  any- 
thing else  but  the  expression  of  existing  rela- 
tionship. Not  nature  as  a  whole  changes;  not 
the  parts  as  mere  parts  change,  nor  do  they  of 
themselves  produce  changes  without,  but  the 
change  in  nature  is  the  interaction  of  her 
different  parts  in  fulfilment  of  the  organic 
whole. 

**Heat  expands,"  then,  is  a  formula,  which 
we  can  now  interpret  only  as  meaning  that 
heat,  instead  of  being  a  peculiar  force  acting 


CAUSATION.  51 

upon  external  conditions  and  producing  in 
them  what  we  know  as  expansion,  is  a  force 
that  has  expansion  as  one  of  its  forms.  Ex- 
pansion is  a  special  condition  of  heat,  or  it  is 
one  of  the  many  organically  related  mutations 
of  heat.  The  simple  doctrine  of  the  mutabil- 
ity of  forces  is  in  its  own  rather  indirect  way 
an  assertion  of  just  what  has  here  been  meant 
by  a  relational  or  responsible  causation. 

And,  even  again  to  refer  to  Columbus,  in 
his  discovery  of  America  he  owed  much  to  the 
winds  and  currents,  and  his  journey  resulted 
only  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  motive.  Europe 
had  come  to  have  too  realistic  a  faith  in  an- 
other world,  even  in  the  present  reality  of  an- 
other world,  she  believed  too  strongly  that  the 
other  world  was  near  at  hand,  to  make  the 
change  to  the  consciousness  of  America  across 
the  seas  seem  anything  but  an  experience  for 
which  there  had  been  an  adequate  preparation. 
Columbus'  journey  was  just  like  other  jour- 
neys, the  fulfilment  of  developed  interests. 
Historians,  thinking  of  his  caravels  and  their 
westward  course,  should  remember  that  Amer- 
ica came  into  European  life,  just  as  Christian- 
ity came  to  Mediterranean  life,  only  when  the 
times  were  ripe  for  it. 


52  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

Furthermore,  as  regards  the  third  case,  it  is 
a  simple  truth,  evident  to  any  one,  that  laws 
and  ordinances  only  define  existing  conditions; 
they  are  never  creative.  The  University  of 
Michigan  existed  in  fact,  it  existed  as  a  condi- 
tion, before  the  defining  or  constituting  act 
was  passed.  Certainly  the  University  had  as 
much  to  do  with  creating  the  act  as  the  act 
with  creating  the  University.  Similarly  the 
American  constitution,  in  spite  of  the  social- 
contract  theory  that  prevailed  when  our  con- 
stitution was  formulated,  is  not  and  was  not 
creative,  but  only  definitive  of  the  social  life 
over  which  it  has  authority.  Nor,  obviously 
enough,  did  man's  discovery  of  the  little  for- 
mula, V  —  gt,  introduce  into  the  world  the  in- 
teresting phenomenon  of  falling  bodies. 

And  as  for  the  earth's  revolution  about  the 
sun,  it  suffices  to  say  that  the  law  of  gravity 
or  rather  the  inner  organic  nature  defined  by 
the  law  is  the  true  controlling  centre — clearly 
not  a  spatially  fixed  centre — of  the  system. 
With  a  formal  time  and  with  an  arbitrary 
causation  we  should  have  to  think  of  the 
system  as  moving  off  into  some  unknown  and, 
what  is  worse,  into  some  essentially  unknow- 
able realm.     The  movement  would  be  noth- 


CA  USA  TION.  53 

ing  but  unrest,  displacement,  without  existing 
relation  to  any  goal;  and  the  system's  future 
would  be  comparable  exactly  with  that  of  a  man 
who  had  to  walk  forward  without  anything  to 
walk  towards.  But  walking,  that  has  a  goal, 
presupposes  a  contemporary  relation  to  the 
future,  and  the  music  of  the  heavenly  spheres 
has  the  same  presupposition. 

Causation,  then,  in  the  light  of  our  criticisms 
and  illustrations,  is — as  already  described — 
organic  differentiation,  that  is  to  say,  the 
consistent  or  responsible  expression  of  an 
organic  unity  or  the  interaction  of  the  related 
parts  of  an  indivisible  and  persisting  self- 
asserting  whole  *.  If  reality  is  organic,  unity 
and  difference  being  essential  to  each  other, 
no  other  conception  of  change  is  necessary 
than  this  that  makes  it  consist  in  the  perma- 
nence, the  expression  and  maintenance,  of 
that  which  is.  Still  our  notion  of  change  and 
causation  must  be  lacking  in  clearness  until  we 
have  explicitly  defined  to  ourselves  the  char- 
acter and  function  of  individuality. 

*  Other  definitions  of  causation,  already  given  implicitly 
if  nqt  explicitly,  are  such  as  these:  *'  Organic  contemporiza- 
tion  of  past  and  future  with  present";  "manifestation  of  the 
conditions  of  activity";  "unification";  ''responsible  or  rela- 
tional activity  ";  and  so  on. 


CHAPTER  III. 

NATURE. 

BEFORE  inquiring  directly  into  the  charac- 
ter and  function  of  individuality  it  will 
be  well  worth  while  to  extract  from  the  fore- 
going the  view  of  nature  that  has  been 
involved. 

Nature  is  a  term  peculiarly  ambiguous  but 
other  possible  meanings  of  it  aside  the  mean- 
ing here  has  reference  to  nature  as  the  sphere 
of  man's  activity  or  for  that  matter  of  the 
activity  of  any  living  creature.  Nature  here 
means  environment.  It  means  the  outer 
world.  It  means  the  larger  including  life  to 
which  we  and  so  many  others  in  some  way 
belong.  And  in  this  sense  it  has  been  an  im- 
portant datum  of  history. 

But  a  very  definite  conception  of  the  rela- 
tion of  living  creatures,  or  human  creatures, 
to  nature  has  been  between  the  lines  of  the 
conclusions  which  have  been  reached  about 
time  and   about  causation.     Briefly,  then,  to 


NA  TURE.  55 

begin  with,  if  time  is  not  a  formal  but  a 
material  condition  of  activity,  of  history  or 
evolution,  and  if  causation  is  not  arbitrary  but 
responsible,  then  nature  and  man,  or  let  us 
say  in  general  the  sphere  of  life  and  life  itself 
are  very  intimately  related.  In  fact  the  rela- 
tion to  nature  is  so  intimate  that  at  least  for 
man  it  is  even  a  personal  relation.  This  may 
seem  to  be  a  suggestion  for  the  philosophy  of 
religion  rather  than  for  the  philosophy  of 
history,  but  in  my  own  view  it  has  as  fitting  a 
place  here  as  anywhere.  Still  let  the  word 
itvSelf  go,  if  it  is  confusing  to  anybody.  In 
any  case,  of  the  positive  intimacy  of  the  rela- 
tion there  can  be  no  doubt. 

A  formal  time  both  gives  a  broken  history, 
or  broken  evolution,  and  separates  the  present 
phases  of  life  from  each  other,  and  an  arbi- 
trary causation  both  means  an  original  crea- 
tion, or  a  succession  of  creations,  and  makes 
present  activities  dependent  on  purely  arbitrary 
or  external  determinations.  For  a  scheme  of 
thought,  then,  which  admits  a  formal  time  and 
an  arbitrary  causation,  nature  can  be  only  a 
general  term  for  something  that  was,  before 
human  life  or  any  sort  of  life  began,  and  that 
ever    since    has   been    a    source   of    external 


56  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY, 

determination,  or  at  least  a  something,  adjust- 
ment to  which  requires  superhuman  or  super- 
animate  power.  Accordingly,  from  such  a 
standpoint  history  can  be  only  a  struggle 
against  unfair  condititions,  a  contest  with 
what  is  absolutely  alien  and  unsympathetic; 
and  both  progress  and  retrogression,  whenever 
either  is  seen  to  have  taken  place,  can  be  ex- 
plained only  by  the  assumption  of  some  inter- 
ference, good  or  evil,  from  without.  Of  course 
the  recognition  of  such  interference  may  bring 
unity  into  what  would  be  chaos  without  it,  but 
it  certainly  casts  a  fatal  shadow  over  the  view 
that  makes  it  necessary. 

With  time  and  causation  in  character  as  we 
have  found  them  nature  appears  at  once  as  the 
helpful  mediator  of  man's  activity,  ever  present 
to  hold  him  up  in  his  struggle,  not  with  her  as 
an  alien  and  brutal  force,  but  with  himself  as 
directly  and  fully  responsible  to  her.  Nature 
as  outwardly  present  to  him  is  only  the  envi- 
ronment in  which  we  have  found  past  and 
future  contemporized  with  the  present;  not 
something  that  was,  before  he  was,  and  still 
remains  as  far  from  him  as  before  he  came, 
but  something  that  holds  him  in  and  with  her- 
self as  a  mother  her  child. 


NATURE.  57 

So  conceived  a  life  with  nature,  however 
difficult  the  struggle,  however  sharp  the  ten- 
sion of  the  manifold  relations  or  responsibili- 
ties, is  in  need  of — or  should  I  not  say  is  in 
danger  of? — no  interference  from  without.  It 
induces  its  own  determinations.  It  is  free, 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  life,  because  the  necessi- 
ties are  its  own  necessities. 

But  somebody  here  reminds  me  that  man 
has  a  spiritual  nature  as  well  as  a  physical, 
that  he  is  intimately  related  to  the  spiritual  as 
well  as  to  the  natural.  This  is  perfectly  true 
and,  curiously  enough,  it  is  exactly  what  I 
mean,  exactly  what  I  am  trying  to  show. 
Man,  not  something  apart  from  him,  has 
indeed  a  spiritual  nature.  The  natural  man 
and  the  spiritual  man — are  they  two  or  only 
one }  If  two,  then  our  study  so  far  has  been 
altogether  idle.  For  us,  to  translate  our  con- 
clusions into  these  new  terms,  the  spiritual 
can  be  but  the  expression  of  the  natural  or 
physical;  it  can  not  possibly  be  escape  from 
the  natural  or  from  the  physical. 

Of  course  in  changing  our  ideas  of  cause  and 
time  we  have  also  changed  our  ideas  of  nature 
and  matter  and  this  should  not  be  lost  sight 
of,  for  a  nature   that   can   be    man's    helpful 


58  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

mediator  is  a  new,  a  transfigured  nature.  Its 
face,  perhaps,  is  too  new  and  too  bright  for 
any  whose  minds  are  still  possessed  with  the 
tenets  of  materialism  or  of  materialism's 
natural  counterpart,  spiritualism;  but  herein  is 
no  reason  for  refusing  to  look  upon  it. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


INDIVIDUALITY. 


p^OR  a  comprehensive  philosophy  of  history 
'  the  individual  must  be  something  besides 
what  we  ordinarily  understand  by  a  person, 
and  this  means  simply,  among  other  things, 
that  personality  itself  must  be  in  principle 
something  more  extensive  than  our  usual  ap- 
plication of  the  term  would  indicate.  Indeed, 
the  usual  application  of  any  term  is  never  ade- 
quate to  its  inner  meaning.  Individuality, 
then,  really  involves  animals  as  well  as  per- 
sons and  things  as  well  as  animals.  All  crea- 
tures are  individuals.  Things  said  to  be  living 
and  things  said  to  be  dead  are  individuals. 
Molecules  and  atoms  are  individuals.  And 
what  is  an  individual? 

The  views  of  individuality,  I  can  hardly  say 
the  possible  views,  since  only  one  view  can  be 
possible,  but  the  views  that  need  here  to  be 
considered,  are  two;  and,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected,   they  belong  to  the  two   schemes  of 


6o  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

thought,  each  to  its  own,  that  have  been 
treated  and  set  over  against  each  other  in  all 
of  the  preceding  chapters.  Thus,  either  indi- 
viduality is  a  matter  of  endowment  or  indwell- 
ing nature  and  power,  or  it  is  a  matter  of 
function,  of  organic  function.  But  which  of 
the  two  can  it  be? 

The  endowment  theory  of  the  individual, 
which  almost  at  once  will  be  seen  to  belong  to 
the  system  of  thought  that  would  have  time 
formal  and  causation  arbitrary,  is  a  theory 
that  makes  force  and  life  and  consciousness 
and  will  the  peculiar  indwelling  properties  of 
that  to  which  they  are  assigned.  To  express 
force,  as  in  the  case  of  an  atom  or  a  molecule, 
or  of  any  pecuHar  manifestation  in  nature,  of 
clouds,  say,  or  of  winds,  or  of  stones,  or  of 
heavenly  bodies,  is  to  act  occultly,  to  act  upon 
what  is  in  no  sense  a  condition  of  the  activity. 
To  live  is  to  have  relation  to  what  is  lifeless, 
as  in  the  case  of  an  organism  adapting  itself  to 
essentially  inorganic  conditions;  it  is  to  be  sub- 
ject to  what  may  fairly  be  called  a  biological 
creed  that  sees  life  only  under  some  precon- 
ceived and  unchanging  and  unchangeable  form. 
Witness  the  conception  of  immutable  species 
or  of  caste  in  nature,  or  of  eternal  election  and 


INDIVIDUALITY,  6i 

damnation,  conceptions  from  no  one  of  which 
modern  life,  although  perhaps  generally  liter- 
ally free,  can  be  said  to  be  spiritually  so.  To 
be  conscious  is  to  apprehend  something  with 
which  the  conscious  being  has  nothing  to  do, 
consciousness — whether  of  self  or  of  what  is 
without,  of  the  not-self — if  an  indwelling  en- 
dowment being  of  necessity  only  epiphenom\ 
eiial.  Thus,  it  is  a  consciousness  whose  sen- 
sations comprise  but  material  elements — fixed 
in  nature  and  value  and  so  ** given" — of 
thought,  and  whose  thoughts  or  inner  states 
are  but  the  arbitrary  unifying  forms  that  re- 
ceive the  sensuous  material  as  only  so  much 
gratuitously  profered  content,  and  that  are 
themselves  as  fixed  and  as  gratuitous  as  what 
they  receive;  a  consciousness,  then,  that  at 
one  moment  may  seem  to  justify  the  doctrines 
of  the  English  sensationalists,  and  at  the  next 
those  of  the  French  and  German  Nativists  and 
Rationalists.  To  have  will,  or  volition,  is  to 
act  irresponsibly  or  creatively  or,  if  I  may  re- 
peat a  term  already  used,  to  act  occultly. 
And,  finally,  to  have  force,  and  life,  and  con- 
sciousness, and  volition,  is  to  be  foUr  distinctly 
separate  individuals  all  in  one.  Moreover, 
and  this  is  the  striking  fact,  the  endowment 


62  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

theory  of  individuality  never  finds  and  never 
can  find  an  individual  in  its  universe  that  is 
not,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  all  four  in 
one. 

How  can  this  be?  Why,  to  consider  only 
two  of  the  several  cases,  to  live  on  the  endow- 
ment plan,  not  only  as  a  matter  of  doctrine 
but  also  as  a  matter  of  practice,  is  to  make 
the  external  conditions  of  life,  that  are  sup- 
posed to  be  lifeless,  alive  on  the  same  plan\ 
or,  putting  the  same  truth  differently,  on  the 
endowment  plan  the  individual  is  not  alive  in 
and  of  itself,  so  that  anything,  particularly 
anything  that  is  a  recognized  condition  of  life, 
can  live  and  in  fact  must  live  in  the  same  ex- 
ternal or  beside-itself  way.  Also,  secondly, 
in  the  case  of  consciousness,  the  object  of  con- 
scious is  just  as  conscious  as  the  subject.  Ob- 
jects are  conscious,  epiphenomenally  conscious, 
in  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  their  physical 
or  only  sensible  qualities.  Berkeley  was  right 
enough  in  finding  nothing  in  a  physical  quahty 
but  a  sensation,  and  Schopenhauer,  among 
others,  in  turning  Kant's  transcendentalism^ or 
phenomenalism,  into  pessimism  and  voluntar- 
ism. But,  says  somebody,  it  is  supremely  ab- 
surd to  say  that   objects  are   conscious.      Per- 


INDIVID  UALITY.  63 

haps  it  is,  but  in  the  first  place  I  am  not  try- 
ing to  avoid  absurdities,  only  to  draw  conclu- 
sions, and  in  the  second  place  it  is  also  true 
that  on  the  endowment  plan  subjects  are  in 
and  of  themselves  as  unconscious  as  objects. 
An  epiphenomenal  consciousness  is  no  better 
than  ur^consciousness;  nay,  it  is  unconscious- 
ness. So  to  be  epiphenomenally  conscious  is 
to  be  nothing  more  nor  less  than  an  uncon- 
scious physical  thing  with  sensible  qualities, 
and  vice  versa.  And,  further,  for  I  will  touch 
very  briefly  upon  another  case,  the  will  of 
what  the  endowment  theory  regards  a  moral 
or  responsible  being  can  not  be  in  any  respect 
different  from  the  indwelling  force  of  a  lifeless, 
unconscious,  non-moral,  physical  thing.  Here- 
after, in  illustration  of  this  truth,  we  shall  see 
that  in  history  the  notion  of  will  or  executive 
authority  as  getting  its  sanction  from  another 
sphere  than  that  in  which  the  expression  or 
execution  takes  place,  or  in  other  words  as 
being  mediate  instead  of  immediate,  or  given 
instead  of  inherent,  has  always  meant  in  prac- 
tice that  might,  strictly  physical  might,  brute 
force,  makes  right.  Names,  it  is  important 
for  us  to  keep  in  mind  constantly,  do  not  nec- 
essarily differentiate  things.     What  history  at 


64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

one  time  chose  to  call  the  spiritual  was  the 
physical  also. 

So,  in  its  important  consequences,  the  en- 
dowment theory  of  the  individual  is  now  be- 
fore us.  Is  it  possible?  Can  we  think  it?  No; 
and  just  because,  when  made  at  all  reflective 
or  self-conscious,  it  can  not  even  think  itself. 
As  if  before  our  very  eyes,  it  has  already 
passed  out  of  itself.  The  necessity,  which  we 
have  discovered  in  it,  of  recognizing  all  indi- 
viduals in  every  individual,  the  conscious  in 
the  unconscious,  the  voluntary  in  the  dynamic, 
the  lifeless  in  the  living,  and  so  on,  has  re- 
vealed to  us  a  theory — none  other  than  the 
organic  function  theory — which  must  find  in 
life  and  consciousness  and  will  and  force 
only  so  many  characters  or  principles  that  are 
all  of  them,  first,  intimately  or  essentially  in- 
volved in  each  other  and,  secondly,  not  pecu- 
liar and  localized  endowments,  but  affairs  of 
the  universe  as  an  indivisible  whole. 

Now  this  second  theory  is  far  from  asserting 
that  stones  are  conscious  voluntary  beings  or 
that  clods  live.  It  asserts  only,  what  was  as 
true  to  the  endowment  theory  as  to  it,  that 
stones  are  as  conscious  and  as  voluntary  as  any 
other  bodies,  even  as  your  body  or  as  mine, 


INDIVIDUALITY.  65 

and  that  clods  are  as  animate  as  any  other 
physical  masses,  even  as  protoplasm  or  still 
more  specifically  as  biophores,  and  then  in  such 
assertions  it  sees,  concealed  perhaps  but  still 
present  and  actual,  another  view — its  own 
view — of  life  and  consciousness.  Life  and 
consciousness,  and  also  will  and  force,  as 
affairs  of  an  indivisible  universe,  are — what 
can  we  say  ? — only  principles  of  organization 
or  differentiation.  Consciousness  is  the  ten- 
sion of  organic  relationship,  or  of  organic 
differentiation;  life,  a  name  for  the  activity 
that  such  relationship  or  differentiation  in- 
volves; and  will  or  force,  the  activity  itself  in 
the  light  of  the  tension.  Stones,  or  any  ob- 
jects, are  accordingly  conscious  only  in  the 
sense  of  being  positive  conditions  of  conscious- 
ness, and  clods  live  only  as  equally  positive, 
which  is  to  say,  essentially  vital  conditions  of 
life. 

And  precisely  what  is  the  individual  in  a 
universe  that,  although  possessing  life  and 
consciousness  and  force  and  will,  refuses  to 
be  divided }  Clearly  it  can  be  no  separate 
entity,  whether  atom  or  biophore  or  person, 
with  never  mind  how  many  separate  in- 
dwelling    endowments.       What     then }      An 


66  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

organic  function — which  is  obviously  a  taut- 
ology; a  relation — which  may  seem  an  idle 
abstraction  to  some  but  which  is,  to  say  the 
least,  as  real,  as  concrete  and  palpable,  as  any 
endowed  entity  ever  was;  or,  finally,  a  respon- 
sible activity — which  may  sound  sensational, 
or  sentimental,  but  which  is  not  absurd  neces- 
sarily. Remember,  we  are  indeed  interested 
primarily  in  a  philosophy  of  the  history  of 
mankind,  but  any  mere  sentiments  that  this 
interest  may  excite  are  quickly  subdued  with 
our  duty  to  the  individuality  of  atoms  as  well 
as  of  men,  of  things  as  well  as  of  persons. 
Only  the  view,  that  takes  heed  of  the  universe, 
can  ever  be  worth  our  while. 

Our  individual,  then,  is  an  organic  function. 
The  cell,  the  hand  or  eye,  the  laborer  in  a 
factory  where  division  of  labor  is  expressed — 
and  in  some  measure  it  always  is  expressed, 
the  social  leader  of  any  sort — and  every  indi- 
vidual leads  in  something,  the  pianist,  whether 
as  one  man  among  others  or  as  an  activity  that 
is  in  relation  to  life  as  a  whole,  or  any  animal, 
whose  life  in  any  way  serves  its  environment 
as  well  as  itself,  is  an  organic  function. 

And,  perhaps  more  generally,  the  individual 
is  a  relation.     Relationship,  however,  is  exactly 


INDIVIDUALITY.  67 

what  organic  function  means,  so  that  the 
examples  above  are  as  apt  here  as  there.  But 
also  the  point  is  a  relation,  being  that  through 
which,  so  to  speak,  the  conception  of  the 
organic  entered  into  the  history  of  mathematics 
or  through  which  pure  mechanics,  finding 
motion  in  a  line  and  force  in  the  motion,  came 
to  light.  The  atom,  as  only  a  centre  of  force, 
is  a  relation,  and,  so  viewed,  has  made  the 
idea  of  mutability  of  forces,  an  idea  which  is 
as  biological  as  physical,  a  possible  idea.  The 
star,  or  the  planet,  is  a  relation ;  else  the  law 
of  gravitation  would  be  a  myth. 

But  the  individual  is  a  responsible  activity. 
In  this  third  account  the  two  others  are  fully 
united  or  identified.  Relationship,  if  real  or 
actual,  is  inevitable  responsibility,  and  a  re- 
sponsible activity  can  not  be  anything  else  but 
an  organic  function.  Here,  with  the  examples 
already  given,  may  be  mentioned  the  members 
of  the  family,  the  father,  the  mother,  the 
child. 

Evidently  the  great  difference  between  the 
endowment  theory  and  the  organic  function 
theory  is  just  this.  The  former  completely 
separates  the  individual  and  his  activity :  the 
latter  completely  identifies  them. 


68  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

How  do  individuals  arise  ?  This,  under  a 
view  that  can  recognize  only  a  relational  or 
responsible  in  place  of  an  arbitrary  causation 
and  only  a  material  in  place  of  a  formal  time 
is  not  a  pertinent  question.  For  our  present 
standpoint  there  is  no  question  of  mere  origin 
just  as  there  is  and  can  be  no  question  of  mere 
destiny.  Individuals  neither  come  to  be  nor 
cease  to  be.  They  are  and  they  are  ever  in  ex- 
pression. The  expression,  as  always  at  once 
a  differentiating  and  an  organizing  process, 
has  the  effect  of  focusing  or  centering  indi- 
viduals in  forms  that  are  spatially  and  tempor- 
ally defined,  but  it  does  nothing  more.  A 
focused  individual — I  do  not  quite  like  the 
metaphor  myself  but  I  can  find  no  better  one — 
is  only  the  specialized  overt  expression  of  an 
activity  that  is  as  inclusive  as  the  universe 
itself.  The  specialization,  of  course,  is  due  to 
the  tension  or  the  consciousness,  being  both  a 
condition  and  a  result  of  it,  which  is  inherent 
in  the  organic  whole.  Thus,  handling,  as  an 
activity,  without  being  any  less  actual  or  con- 
crete, is  more  general  than  hands,  existing 
before  the  development  of  hands  and  being 
now  more  extensive  than  the  hands  that  are; 
and  fatherhood  and  motherhood  are  more  gen- 


INDIVIDUALITY.  69 

eral  or  more  extensive,  both  temporally  and 
spatially,  than  fathers  and  mothers;  and  cell- 
formation  than  cells,  leadership  than  leaders, 
music  than  pianists,  hammering  than  hammers, 
thought  than  thinkers,  motion  than  positions 
or  points,  force  than  forces.  Not  by  any 
means  that  the  more  general  and  the  centred 
or  focused  individual  are  in  any  sense  two,  nor 
that  the  consciousness  of  the  one,  in  the  sense 
of  consciousness  as  a  tension  of  organic  rela- 
tionship, is  not  also  the  consciousness  of  the 
other, — that  plainly  is  not  my  meaning,  but 
simply  that  the  focusing,  the  differentiation, 
makes  the  consciousness  clearer  and  determines 
more  precisely  the  individual's  place  in  the 
whole. 

Is  this  a  new  idea  of  individuality }  Hardly. 
If  it  were  really  new  it  would  not  be  possible; 
we  could  not  think  it.  With  what  is  pos- 
sible, with  what  is  true,  we  are  always  more 
familiar  than  we  ever  know.  Thus  with  this 
idea  of  the  individual  as  not  some  thing 
apart  from  activity  but  as  itself  an  organic 
function,  in  which  the  agent  and  the  act  are 
one  and  the  same  thing,  the  thought  of  today 
must  find  itself,  nay,  is  finding  itself  surpris- 
ingly well   acquainted.      In   almost  countless 


70  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

ways,  that  are  not  always  reflected  upon,  it  is 
identifying  instead  of  separating  individuals 
and  their  activity.  It  is  finding  an  identity 
between  what  lives  and  life  itself,  between 
what  wills  and  the  deeds  willed,  between  what 
thinks  and  what  is  thought,  and  between  what 
exerts  force  and  force  itself.  Do  I  need  to 
give  examples  t  Here  are  a  few.  The  thought 
of  today  is  explaining  men  by  their  time;  re- 
ferring acts  in  general  to  their  conditions — 
instead  of  to  some  external  will  originally  good 
or  originally  bad;  taking,  then,  not  the  will 
for  the  deed  but  the  deed  for  the  will;  insist- 
ing on  proved  capacity  as  the  sole  evidence  of 
right  to  authority;  in  short,  putting  character 
— and  let  me  say,  character  of  atoms  as  well 
as  of  persons,  for  physics  is  not  behind  ethics 
or  politics — above  mere  position.  No  longer  , 
are  endowed  rights  or  powers  allowed  to  posi- 
tions of  any  kind.  Positions,  everywhere,  are 
relations. 

Here  is  a  tool,  a  pocket-knife,  the  means  to 
somebody's  activity;  and  are  the  agent  and  the 
act  and  the  tool  to  be  treated  as  three  things, 
or  two,  or  only  one.?  They  can  hardly  be 
more  than  one.  Of  course  the  agent  is  more 
than  a  mere  whittler,  but  also  his  act  is  more 


INDIVID  UALITY.  7 1 

than  mere  whittling,  and  the  knife  itself,  in 
which  are  embodied  the  very  principles  of  all 
tools,  is  more  than  a  mere  knife,  so  that, 
although  we  see  the  three  as  different,  we  do 
so  only  by  seeing  the  agent,  for  example,  and 
the  knife  or  the  act  and  the  knife  or  the  agent 
and  the  act  from  different  points  of  view, 
whereas  such  differences  of  view  are  not  at  all 
fair  to  the  question  that  we  asked.  An  act,  in 
general,  is  often  thought  to  be  somebody's 
application  of  natural  force  to  his  own  ends, 
and  in  this  view  the  applying  agent  and  the 
applied  force  and  the  mediating  activity  are 
not  identified;  but  their  separation  is  due  to 
the  conflicting  points  of  view,  as  just  shown. 
Surely,  in  the  case  of  anybody's  act,  it  is  quite 
as  true  that  nature  applies  her  own  force  or 
that  environment  acts  on  itself  as  that  the 
individual  applies  the  force  or  acts  on  the 
environment.  The  application  of  any  force  is 
only  the  expression  of  force  as  such,  which  is 
to  say,  of  all  force. 

Again,  I  cross  my  study  to  the  thermometer 
to  find  what  the  temperature  is.  Here,  be- 
sides activity,  the  fact  of  consciousness  is 
involved.  This  was  not  absent  before,  only 
kept  out  of  sight.     Are  my  consciousness  of 


72  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

the  thermometer's  record  and  the  thermometer 
itself  and  the  temperature  of  the  room  three 
things,  or  two,  or  only  one?  These  also  can 
be  only  one.  The  thermometer  does  but  show 
nature,  as  it  were,  measuring  herself,  reacting 
upon  herself,  unless  forsooth  the  expansion  of 
the  mercury  is  to  be  separated  from  the  heat  of 
the  room.  But,  some  one  says,  the  measure- 
ment is  my  consciousness,  not  nature's,  nature 
being  unconscious.  How  can  any  one  back- 
slide in  this  way.!*  Such  a  statement  may  suit 
the  endowment  theory,  but  it  is  impossible;  it 
is  positively  wrong.  The  consciousness  that 
takes  me  to  the  thermometer  is  as  much  the 
effect  of  the  heat  as  the  cause  of  my  going,  the 
going  itself  being  only  one  of  the  many  motions 
in  which  the  heat  of  the  room  has  found 
expression.  The  hot  room,  then,  to  which  I 
belong,  reacting  on  itself,  or  I  as  warm  react- 
ing on  myself  as  a  function  of  the  room,  which 
is  my  environment,  is  all  that  any  one  can  get 
out  of  the  process.  It  is  all,  I  say,  but  that  is 
a  good  deal.  Through  the  tension  of  the 
reaction  the  process  is  a  conscious  one.  I 
find  out  something.  My  experience,  or  my 
activity,  which  has  its  relation  of  course  to  a 
larger  experience  or  a  larger  activity,  becomes 


INDIVIDUALITY.  73 

defined,  and  in  one  direction  or  the  other  I 
change  the  temperature  of  the  room,  opening 
the  register  or  raising  a  window,  or — with  the 
same  meaning — the  room  changes  its  own 
temperature.  The  definition  of  experience  or 
activity  is  always  followed  by  expression  of  the 
larger  experience  or  the  larger  activity,  and 
this,  obviously  enough,  because  the  larger 
experience  or  activity  is  in  the  definition. 

But  what  materialism!  What  determinism! 
Only,  fortunately,  names  never  condemn.  But 
sometimes  their  application  ends  by  trans- 
forming their  meaning  completely.  In  an 
earlier  chapter  I  must  have  seemed  material- 
istic or  deterministic  when  I  virtually  denied  to 
Columbus  the  discovery  of  America,  finding  in 
the  voyage  of  the  caravels  only  his  discovery 
of  himself  or  America's  discovery  of  herself, 
but  that  and  this  are  very  different  indeed 
from  what  most  understand  by  those  offensive 
names.  The  activity  of  an  individual  that 
expresses  only  what  in  its  own  nature  it  is 
responsible  to,  namely,  its  own  relations  or  its 
own  conditions,  may  be  a  determined  activity, 
for  responsibility  implies  determination,  but 
the  determination  is  immanent  or  essential, 
not   external.     It  may,  too,  be  a  result  of  a 


74  PHIL  OSOPH  Y  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

** material"  environment,  but  not  unless  with 
as  much  truth  the  ''material"  environment  is 
also  a  result  of  it,  the  two  being  functionally 
related.  Or,  again,  if  environment's  act  is 
also  the  agent's  act,  then  both  materialism 
and  determinism  are  transformed.  By  the 
deep  experience  which  their  application  to 
activity  upon  this  plan  brings  them  they  are 
converted;  they  are  spiritually  regenerated. 

Individuals,  as  relations  or  organic  func- 
tions or  responsible  activities,  having  their 
reality  in  and  of  what  they  do,  in  the  very 
fact  of  their  expression  serve  to  define  both 
the  process  to  which  they  belong  and  their 
own  positive  part  in  it.  Their  very  activity, 
their  focusing,  brings  a  completer  organization 
and  a  clearer  consciousness  both  to  themselves 
and  to  the  whole  that  includes  them.  More- 
over, the  consciousness  that  they  define  and 
the  activity  that  they  express  are  their  con- 
sciousness and  their  activity.  They  have,  in 
other  words,  a  substantial,  not  a  merely  for- 
mal part  in  what  goes  on.  At  first  thought  it 
might  seem  as  if  under  the  organic  function 
theory  individuals,  both  in  their  consciousness 
and  their  activity,  were  hopelessly  subjected 
to   the   including  whole,    but   this   is  exactly 


INDIVIDUALITY.  75 

what  does  not  happen.  The  whole  is  not  an 
including  whole,  but  an  organic  whole.  The 
consciousness  and  the  activity,  therefore, 
belong  neither  to  the  parts  nor  to  the  whole, 
in  the  sense  of  either  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
other,  but  are  among  the  parts  or  intrinsic  to 
the  relations  of  the  parts,  and  so  belong  to 
the  whole  only  through  and  in  these  relations. 
The  consciousness  of  the  parts  is  itself  the 
consciousness  of  the  whole  and  the  activity  of 
the  parts  is  itself  the  activity  of  the  whole. 
Under  the  organic  function  theory  a  conscious 
and  responsible  individuality  is  a  necessity, 
being  as  original  and  as  constantly  active  as 
unity  or  wholeness  itself.  As  relations,  as 
responsible  activities,  individuals  have  an  in- 
alienable reality. 

We  have,  then,  an  individuality  that  trans- 
cends any  mere  bounds  of  space  and  time 
without  in  any  way  relieving  us  of  a  direct 
duty  to  what  now  is  and  is  now  involving  us. 
The  endowment  theory  implied  such  a  trans- 
cendence too,  but  only  by  virtually  removing 
all  present  and  manifest  relationships.  En- 
dowment itself  was  transcendence,  but  it  was 
also  isolation  from  all  the  conditions  of  action 
and  so  even  from  self.     Here,  however,  in  the 


76  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

individual  as  an  organic  function,  we  have 
transcendence  without  alienation  or  isolation. 
The  individual,  instead  of  being  spatially  and 
temporally  determined  on  the  one  hand  and 
spiritually  or  immaterially  real  and  immertal 
on  the  other,  is  real  and  immortal  just  because 
a  spatial  and  temporal  individual.  Of  course, 
in  this  case  the  meanings  of  space  and  time 
are  changed.  The  spatial  and  temporal  indi- 
vidual, being  in  and  of  itself  more  than  a  local 
and  momentary  existence,  requires  no  other 
separate  part  in  which  to  secure  for  itself  a 
permanent  reality.  Is  fatherhood  or  mother- 
hood born.?  Or  does  it  die.!*  Do  any  of  the 
relations  of  life,  identification  with  which  is 
just  that  upon  which  a  real  individuality  de- 
pends, either  come  into  being  or  pass  away.? 
Some  time  ago,  in  observing  that  the  indi- 
vidual is  never  a  new  activity,  but  only  a 
general  activity  focused,  or  a  force  in  particu- 
lar relation  or  application,  we  saw  that  indi- 
viduals were  not  born,  and  it  is  equally  true  that 
they  do  not  pass  away.  Individual  expression 
and  individual  consciousness  define;  they  do 
not  create,  they  do  not  destroy.  Handling, 
for  example,  not  only  precedes  but  it  also  sur- 
vives hands;  and  so  of  seeing  in  relation  to 


INDIVIDUALITY.  77 

eyes,  of  hammering  to  hammers,  of  kingship 
to  kings,  of  monetary  exchange  to  money,  and 
of  any  individual  activity,  more  simple  or  more 
complex,  to  the  things  or  organs  with  which 
we  identify  it.  In  fine,  identify  an  individual 
with  its  activity,  seeing  in  its  life  and  con- 
sciousness and  will  and  force  an  actual  rela- 
tionship, a  real  organic  function,  and  you 
insure  to  it  an  immortality  that  is  as  substan- 
tial and  inviolable  as  the  universe  itself;  a 
conscious  immortality,  too,  for  the  activity,  in 
which  the  life  of  the  individual  persists,  is  ever 
conscious  of  its  conditions  and  its  consciousness 
is  also  the  individual's  consciousness.* 

But  here  we  come  again  to  the  sphere  of 
religion,  when  our  direct  concern  is  not  with 
what  our  view  of  the  individual  may  mean  to 
a  philosophy  of  religion,  but  with  what  it 
means  to  a  philosophy  of  history.  To  philos- 
ophy, however,  the  two  are  really  insepar- 
able. But  for  history,  or  for  evolution,  the 
organic  function  theory  of  individuality  is  of 
an  immeasurable  importance,  since  it  makes 

*  I  hardly  need  to  call  attention  to  the  consistency  of  this 
view  of  the  individual  as  in  its  very  spatial  and  temporal 
character  a  transcending  nature  with  the  view  of  environment, 
suggested  in  the  chapter  on  "Time,"  as  the  past  and  future 
contemporized  with  the  present.  The  individual  is  a  function, 
a  relation,  of  environment. 


78  PHILOSOPHV  OF  HISTORY. 

history  real.  It  offers  the  only  conception  of 
the  individual,  whether  as  nation  or  as  man 
or  as  event  or  as  any  historical  phenomenon, 
--the  only  conception,  upon  which  a  continu- 
ous, self-consistent  history  can  be  established. 
Institutions  and  historical  phenomena  of  all 
sorts  can  be  only  the  manifested  definitions  of 
existing  tendencies,  since  they  neither  create 
nor  destroy  anything.  Their  definition  has 
the  effect  merely  of  liberating  for  more  con- 
trolled or  more  organic  expression  the  tenden- 
cies which  they  define.  And,  in  particular, 
the  personal  characters  of  history  are  but  the 
definition,  the  focused  individuation  of  general 
— but  always  perfectly  real  and  concrete — 
activities  in  the  social  life.  They  are — in  the 
familiar  but  somewhat  misleading  phrase 
already  criticized  here — applications,  society's 
applications  as  well  as  their  own,  of  the  forces 
in  the  social  life;  and  they  make  the  social  life, 
not  conscious,  but  more  clearly  conscious  of 
itself,  and  so  stimulate  a  repetition  or  rather  a 
more  vital,  a  more  responsible  continuation  of 
their  careers  in  the  life  that  gave  them  birth 
only  to  take  them  to  itself  again. 

In  chapters  that  are  to  follow,  notably  in  the 
chapter:   ''The  Great  Man,"  examples  of  the 


INDIVIDUALITY.  79 

historical  process,  here  only  generally  re- 
counted, will  be  given  and  discussed  at  some 
length,  but  in  order  at  once  to  make  the  idea 
itself  quite  real,  I  will  mention  here  perhaps 
the  most  striking  example  of  all.  In  the  sim- 
ple fact,  with  the  meaning  suggested  by  the  or- 
ganic function  theory,  that  Christ  lives  in 
Christendom  today,  the  history  of  the  past 
nineteen,  twenty,  centuries  is  made  a  real  his- 
tory, a  history  with  which  we  now  can  directly 
identify  ourselves.  Perhaps  in  its  doctrine  of 
the  after-life  of  Christ  Christianity  itself  has 
had  a  better  philosophy  of  history  than  it  has 
been  clearly  aware  of.  Certainly — and  our 
interest  here  is  primarily  historical,  not  relig- 
ious, although  we  have  a  right  to  use  the  ex- 
periences of  religion — the  living  Christ  today 
is  not  some  spirit,  external  to  us  that  live,  but 
is  in  and  of  the  life  and  consciousness  that  we 
call  ours.* 

*See  also  my  book  "Citizenship  and  Salvation,  or  Greek 
and  Jew,"  in  which  I  have  undertaken  a  study  of  the  death 
of  Socrates  and  the  death  of  Christ  from  the  standpoint  de- 
fined here. 


CHAPTER  V. 


PROGRESS. 


K  low  that  we  have  considered  in  greater  or 
'  ^  in  less  detail,  as  the  circumstances  seemed 
to  require,  the  character  of  time  and  causation 
and  nature  and  individuality  as  data  of  history 
we  should  be  able  to  free  ourselves  from  the 
limitation  of  our  vivisection  and  find  in  them 
all  a  living  whole.  We  should  see  the  history 
which  they  make  as  something  that  stands 
and  moves  before  us.  As  a  living  or  moving 
whole,  however,  they  are  what  commonly  we 
call  progress.  In  progress,  then,  is  the  all-in- 
cluding and  all-fulfilling  datum  of  history  to 
which  we  have  at  last  to  turn  our  attention. 

In  our  conception  of  progress  there  are  four 
principles  that  are  all  but  axiomatic  and  that 
are  four  only  until  stated,  when  they  become 
one.  The  first  of  these  principles  is  this: 
Progress  must  always  be  of  that  which  pro- 
gresses. In  other  words,  to  be  real  or  signifi- 
cant it  can  be  only  the  expression  of  an  already 


PROGRESS.  8i 

immanent  and  already  active  nature  in  that  to 
which  it  is  ascribed.  Neither  creation  nor  ac- 
quisition, neither  destruction  nor  loss  can  enter 
into  it.  It  forbids  both  outgrowth  in  the  sense 
of  complete  elimination  and  genesis  in  the 
sense  of  sudden  and  wholly  novel  attainment. 
For  a  real  and  significant  progress  whatever 
comes  to  be  is  only  the  responsible,  the  con- 
sistent, the  organically  related  expression  of 
what  both  is  and  was.  Nothing  can  be  here- 
after that  already  is  not.  Nothing  is  now  that 
was  not.  Division  of  labor,  to  give  a  single 
example,  is  progress,  because  it  neither  adds  to 
that  in  which  it  occurs  nor  substracts  from  it, 
but  only  expresses  and  fulfills  it.  True,  pro- 
gress has  sometimes  been  predicated  of  a  life 
that  did  not  belong  to  and  that  accordingly 
was  not  responsible  to  that  which  lived,  but 
only  with  the  effect  of  turning  the  predicate 
into  a  mere  empty  name.  A  progress  that  is 
external,  irresponsible,  arbitrary,  is  worthless. 
It  is  not  real.  Where  were  the  worth  to  a 
child  in  jumping  a  brook,  if  the  act  were  not 
his .? 

But,  secondly,  progress  can  belong  only  to 
that  which  is  conscious.  Without  conscious- 
ness the  responsibility  to  self,   which  is  neces- 


82  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

sary  to  the  real  and  significant  progress  of  any- 
thing, is  not  possible.  Consciousness  is  the 
medium  in  which  the  past  and  the  future  of  an 
activity  are  contemporized  with  the  present 
and  in  being  this  it  is  what  a  physical  science 
would  call  a  principle  of  conservation.  Con- 
servation, however,  means  responsibility  in  any 
process  that  is  subject  to  it.  Hence  evolution 
today,  for  the  sake  of  its  own  inner  consistency 
as  well  as  for  the  interpretation  of  its  observa- 
tions and  discoveries  has  realized  the  supreme 
importance  both  of  identifying  life  and  con- 
sciousness, or  rather  of  finding  each  of  these 
intrinsic  to  the  other,  and  of  regarding  the  two 
as  not  local  and  temporary  endowments  but 
essential  characters  or  functions  in  an  indivisi- 
ble universe.  With  consciousness  an  endow- 
ment the  recognized  conditions  of  expression 
are  external  to  the  conscious  creature,  and  this 
is  a  fatal  separation,  but  with  consciousness 
the  property  of  an  organic  universe  such  a  fatal 
separation  is  impossible  and  a  responsible  fully 
conserved  expression  of  self,  which  is  a  genu- 
ine progress,  is  assured. 

And,  thirdly,  progress  depends  on  individ- 
uals; on  all  individuals,  however,  not  on  any- 
one and  not  on  a  few;  for  individuality  is  noth- 


PROGRESS.  83 

in^  more  nor  less  than  a  condition  of  conscious- 
ness. Only  through  individuals,  perhaps  the 
organs  of  your  or  my  body,  perhaps  the  sepa- 
rate members  or  the  different  classes  of  society, 
perhaps  even  all  the  manifold  manifestations  of 
life,  can  activity  become  conscious  of  itself 
and  of  the  conditions  of  its  expression.  What 
above  was  called  the  focusing  of  individuals  has 
as  its  great  ofBce  the  development  of  a  clearer 
consciousness  of  self  in  the  activity  in  which 
the  individual  appears.  Or,  again,  the  tension 
of  organic  relationship,  which  is  consciousness, 
is  also  the  sole  foundation — but  a  very  sub- 
stantial foundation  withal  since  the  organic 
and  the  real  are  one — of  individuality.  Not 
to  touch  upon  more  complicated  cases  in  this 
place,  the  three  individual  classes  of  human 
society,  which  contemporize,  the  first,  the  past 
and,  the  second,  the  future  with  the  present 
and  at  the  same  time,  in  the  third,  do  the  pe- 
culiar and  immediate  tasks — shall  we  say  the 
drudgery.? — of  the  present,  I  mean  in  brief  the 
leisured  conventionalists,  the  advanced  think- 
ers, and  the  workers  or  laborers  in  society, 
show — for  the  social  consciousness — what  the 
relation  between  consciousness  and  individu- 
ality is,  and  also  how  necessary  both  are  to  a 


84  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

genuine  progress.  Perhaps,  too,  some  reader 
will  comprehend  me  here  with  sufficient  clear- 
ness to  find  another  illustration  in  the  three 
great  realms  of  the  inorganic  so-called,  the 
rational  or  human,  and  the  animate  or  organic. 
But,  if  this  second  illustration  fail,  a  third  and 
last  one  is  in  the  relation  that  every  one  of  us 
conscious  individuals  bears  to  the  life  as  a  whole 
in  which  we  find  ourselves.  Each  of  us — and 
it  matters  not  into  which  social  class  we  may 
be  put,  since  from  one  or  another  point  of  view 
each  one  belongs  to  all  the  classes — is  making 
society  conscious  of  some  detail  of  its  natural 
responsibility. 

Lastly,  progress  is  neither  of  individual 
parts  or  organs,  whether  away  from  each 
other  or  away  from  the  whole  to  which  they 
belong,  nor  of  the  whole  in  the  sense  of  a 
unity  that  is  external  to  its  parts,  but  of  the 
whole  and  the  parts  as  inseparable,  of  the 
whole  in  the  expressed  relations  of  the  parts, 
and  of  the  parts  in  their  responsibility  to  each 
other  or  to  the  unity  upon  which  their  individ- 
uality depends.  This  is  to  say,  what  I  think 
no  one  after  reflection  would  deny,  that  coex- 
isting parts  or  individuals,  whether  nations  or 
social   classes  or  persons  or  particular  things 


PROGRESS,  85 

or  events  of  any  kind,  can  never  be  either 
ahead  of  their  times  or  behind  their  times. 
All  that  are  at  any  time  are  present,  and  pres- 
ent not  merely  in  the  formal  condition  of 
time — time  never  is  a  merely  formal  condition 
— but  also  in  their  nature  or  character.  The 
evolution  of  man,  for  example,  has  not  been  a 
growth  out  of  or  away  from  the  primary  con- 
ditions of  his  existence  or  * '  origin. ' '  His  en- 
vironment has  evolved  with  him.  And  social 
classes,  even  if  opposed,  are  neither  ahead  of 
nor  behind  each  other,  their  conflict  alone 
being  evidence  of  their  contemporaneity.  To 
evolution  and  conspicuously  to  history  in  the 
narrower  sense  of  human  civilization  the  ma- 
terial contemporaneity  of  coexisting  individ- 
uals is  a  principle  whose  importance  could 
hardly  be  overstated.  In  the  light  of  it  con- 
sider the  relation,  not  only  of  man  to  nature, 
but  also  of  a  great  genius  to  his  times,  of  rul- 
ers to  those  that  are  ruled,  of  the  lawless  to 
the  law-abiding,  of  men  to  women,  of  capital 
to  labor,  and  so  on  without  limit. 

But  now,  apart  from  these  four  principles  or 
axioms  that  underUe  a  genuine  progress  and 
that,  put  in  a  single  sum,  make  progress  pos- 
sible only  to  the  activity  of  an  organism — or 


86  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

to  be  very  tautological — to  the  conscious  ac- 
tivity of  a  system  of  different  but  mutually 
serving  individuals,  we  may  profitably  under- 
take here  a  somewhat  careful  analysis  of  or- 
ganic activity  itself,  with  the  hope  of  finding 
still  more  adequately  aud  still  more  positively 
in  just  what  progress  consists.  Indeed,  so  far 
we  have  considered  chiefly  the  conditions  or 
limitations  of  a  genuine  progress,  and  now  we 
have  to  see  its  possibilities.  So  far,  at  least 
to  some,  we  may  even  seem  to  have  turned 
progress  into  a  sheer  being  what  is  and  stay- 
ing in  statu  quo,  whereas  we  need  to  make 
sure  that  no  such  misinterpretation  is  the  final 
interpretation.  "'^ 

So,  to  begin  the  analysis  at  once,  it  is  ra- 
tionally necessary  as  well  as  empirically  true, 
that  activity,  that  any  activity  of  individual,  of 
society,  or  of  the  universe  itself,  be  not  the 
assumption  of  new  relationships,  nor  escape 
from  old  relationships,  but  the  expression  and 
only  the  expression  of  existing  relationships. 
The  child  that  jumps  the  brook  only  expresses 

*In  the  analysis  that  follows  my  community  of  thought 
with  Prof.  John  Dewey,  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  will  be 
evident  to  any  one  who  has  read  the  third  chapter,  **  A  Gen- 
eral Study  of  Conduct,"  in  his  Study  of  Ethics  (Ann  Arbor, 
1894.) 


PROGRESS.  87 

existing  relationships;  and,  in  general,  were 
activity  not  so  conditioned  the  criticism  of 
causation  or  change  in  a  former  chapter  would 
be  meaningless,  and  we  should  be,  in  so  far  as 
we  have  accepted  its  conclusions,  the  victims 
of  a  fatal  deception.  As  causation  must  be 
responsible,  not  arbitrary,  so  activity  must  be 
only  expressive  of  what  is.  And,  furthermore, 
the  expression  of  activity  always  brings  a 
clearer  consciousness  of  its  conditions  or  rela- 
tions. Activity  both  has  and  brings — in  the 
sense  of  more  fully  defines — a  consciousness  of 
its  conditions,  for  the  tension  of  the  relation- 
ship expressed,  which  is  consciousness,  is  es- 
sential to  activity.  This  truth  is  very  com- 
monly recognized  in  popular  thought.  Action 
as  being  a  process  of  self- discovery,  as  induc- 
ing its  own  interpretation,  is  a  very  common- 
place idea,  the  burden  of  many  sermons  and 
an  oft-recurring  argument  in  political  speech- 
es, and  the  only  variation  that  we  are  here 
making  upon  the  popular  notion  is  in  our  em- 
phatic contention  that  the  induced  conscious- 
ness is  intrinsic  to  the  activity,  being  as  much 
a  condition  as  a  result  of  it.  Action  does  not 
induce  consciousness  in  the  sense  of  producing 
or  obtaining  something  altogether  new;  it  only 


88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

clears  or  defines  the  consciousness  that  has  al- 
ready made  the  action  possible.  And  this,  it 
is  plain,  is  only  another  way  of  repeating  that 
consciousness  is  not  a  local  and  temporal  en- 
dowment but  a  force  or  function  that  mediates 
among  all  the  incidents  of  activity.  * 

"With  a  clearer  consciousness  of  its  condi- 
tions activity  is  thrown  into  a  conflict  with  it- 
self. So  to  speak,  the  natural  tension  of  its 
expression  is  made  keener  or  sharper.  The 
tendency  to  continue  along  the  old  paths  con- 
flicts with  the  recognized  need  of  meeting  the 
responsibility  of  the  new  experience;  and  this 
conflict  is  an  unavoidable  one  because  the  re- 
cognized need  is  no  mere  future  demand,  the 
leap  into  the  future  having  been  taken  already 
by  the  act  itself.  So  to  say,  the  activity  that 
has  already  taken  place  is  the  future,  for  it  is 
the  source  and  object  of  the  responsibility. 
Evidently,  too,  the  conflict  that  arises  in  such 
a  way  can  have  no  solution  except  such  as  will 
secure  for  the  outgrown  activity — for  we  can 
now  call  it  that  also — a  more  definite  place  in 
the  system  of  possible  acts  that  make  up  the 
agent's  repertory,  and  that  when  brought  to  an 

*  Compare  the  principle  of  relativity  in  the  modern  theo- 
ries of  sensation.  See  also  the  discussion  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness in  chapter  vii. 


PROGRESS.  89 

organic  unity  will  fully  satisfy  both  the  conserv- 
ative tendency  from  the  past  and  the  demand 
of  the  new  experience.  Elimination  of  the 
outgrown  activity  would  only  intensify  instead 
of  solving  the  conflict.  It  would  be  no  more 
adequate  than  a  literal  repetition.  Two  na- 
tions go  to  war  and  the  conflict  is  plainly  one 
of  an  already  existing  social  life  with  itself, 
and  in  the  outcome  both  of  the  contestants 
change  their  ways  of  life,  but  without  necessar- 
ily losing  their  individuality.  Indeed,  they 
gain  in  individuality  through  the  more  respon- 
sible expression  of  it,  that  is  to  say,  through 
the  more  social,  the  more  organic  expression 
of  it,  that  the  war  induces,  and  when  the  war 
is  over  the  social  relation  whose  expression 
had  made  the  war  necessary  is  only  freer  to 
express  itself  than  before.  In  like  manner,  an 
individual  person  finds  himself  opposed  by  his 
environment,  but  again  the  conflict  is  of  an 
already  expressed  activity  with  itself.  Indeed 
this  illustration  suggests  what  is  becoming  a 
familiar  idea  in  current  thinking.  Any  con- 
flict is  describable  is  one  of  two  ways  indiffer- 
ently. It  is  either  of  an  agent  with  himself  or 
of  the  environment  with  itself.  It  is,  very 
positively,  not  of  one  with  the  other  in  the 


90  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

meaning  of  the  two  as  unrelated  or  only  newly 
related  factors.  If  we  see  the  conflict  as  of 
an  agent  with  himself,  we  recognize  in  it  a 
thought  process;  if  as  of  the  environment  with 
itself,  a  physical  process;  and  on  the  one  hand 
we  have  deliberation  before  volition,  on  the 
other  latent  preparation  before  kinetic  mani- 
festation, but  the  process  is  the  same  in  both 
cases.  The  agent,  although  separated,  is  after 
all  always  a  part  of  his  own  environment;  and 
the  environment,  although  separated,  also 
shares  in  the  relations  that  are  already  ex- 
pressed in  the  action  that  brings  on  the  con- 
flict. 

And,  further,  the  consciousness  that  neces- 
sarily accompanies  a  conflict  of  this  sort,  that 
is  both  a  condition  and  a  result  of  the  inducing 
activity,  can  have  no  goal  but  the  organization 
of  its  elements  or  incidents,  these  being  iden- 
tical with  the  conditions  of  the  activity  itself. 
Indeed  it  is  to  be  kept  in  mind  that  the  * '  ele- 
ments ' '  of  consciousness,  whether  viewed  as 
subjective  states  or  objective  qualities,  are  only 
the  relations  or  conditions  of  an  already 
expressed  activity.  In  general,  then,  con- 
sciousness as  thus  intimately  involved  in  an  ac- 
tivity that  has  originally  related  its  subject  and 


PROGRESS.  9t 

its  object  would  only  realize  the  law  of  the  ac- 
tivity itself,  and  it  would  do  this  solely  that  in 
the  law  it  may  have  a  safe,  because  a  fully  sat- 
isfying motive  to  the  expression  of  itself.  Now 
a  law,  sometimes  called  a  concept,  is  a  princi- 
ple of  spatial  and  temporal  determination  of 
the  different  but  related  incidents  of  a  process 
and  in  exactly  this  sense  it  is  the  natural  object 
or  content  of  consciousness.  Only,  neither  ob- 
ject nor  content  is  a  safe  term  for  use  here. 
The  meaning  is  not  by  any  means  that  law  as 
some  abstract  immaterial  idea — in  the  under- 
standing of  a  psychology  that  would  separate 
thought  and  sensation  or  mind  and  body — is 
the  object  or  the  content  of  consciousness,  but 
simply  and  inevitably  that  consciousness  in  and 
of  itself  is  lawful,  very  much  as  nature  is  said 
to  be  lawful,  the  law  and  the  process  being  one 
and  the  same  thing.  So,  in  summary,  activity 
which  induces  a  clearer  consciousness  of  its 
own  natural  conditions  and  thereby  sharpens 
the  tension  of  its  expression,  its  conflict  with 
itself,  is  bound  to  develop  as  one  of  its  direct 
incidents  an  ever  more  definitely  lawful  con- 
sciousness; or,  to  look  to  the  other  side  of  the 
same  movement,  the  conditions  of  activity, 
which  comprise  what  we  find  can  be  called  the 


gi  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

object  of  consciousness  not  without  danger  of 
serious  misunderstanding,  develop  into  a  law- 
ful environment;  and  with  this  development, 
whether  of  a  lawful  consciousness  or  of  a  law- 
ful environment,  the  existing  conflict  ap- 
proaches its  solution  in,  not  a  new,  but  a  freer 
expression  of  the  original  and  ever-persisting 
activity.  Moreover  freer  expression  is  just 
that  in  which  progress  consists. 

Illustrations  are  not  wanting.  In  chapters  to 
follow  this  we  shall  find  the  evolution  of  hu- 
man society,  in  short  the  history  of  civilization, 
to  be  true  to  the  analysis  of  activity  in  general 
that  has  been  given,  but  in  this  place  I  may 
appeal  for  illustration  only  to  such  activities  as 
dealing  an  accurate  blow,  conducting  a  politi- 
cal campaign,  building  a  house,  or  writing  a 
book.  In  each  of  these  the  consciousness 
that  accompanies  the  process — first — is  always 
both  a  condition  and  a  result  of  the  process, 
and — second — is  neither  subjective  nor  objec- 
tive because  both  subjective  and  objective  or 
rather  because  only  the  tension  of  an  existing 
organic  relationship  between  subject  and  ob- 
ject, and — third — is  the  liberation  of  the  pro- 
cess in  its  own  realized  lawfulness. 

The  liberation  of  activity,  then,  in  its  own 


PROGRESS.  93 

realized  lawfulness  is  our  formula  for  progress. 
But  law,  which  is  a  term  that  can  be  applied 
indifferently  to  consciousness  and  to  environ- 
ment, to  mind  and  to  matter,  just  by  dint  of 
its  serving  to  determine  the  organic  relations 
of  all  of  the  details  or  incidents  of  activity  or 
— and  this  is  the  same  thing — of  all  of  the 
possible  activities  in  an  agent's  repertory,  has 
a  distinctly  timeless  character,  being  that  in 
which — to  recall  a  now  familiar  phrase — the 
future  and  the  past  are  contemporized  with  the 
present.  We  may,  therefore,  in  open  recog- 
nition of  this  function  of  law  reword  our  for- 
mula of  progress  as  follows: 

Progress  is  the  timeless'*'  because  defining 
and  contemporizing  law  of  the  past,  whether 
as  thought  or  as  environment,  becoming  the 
motive,  which  is  only  the  defined  and  contem- 
porized future,  of  the  present. 

And  progress  is  the  all-including  and  all-ful- 
filling datum  of  history.      Progress  is  history. 

♦Timeless,  of  course,  in  the  sense  that  refers  only  to  a  ful- 
filment of  the  temporal,  not  to  anything  outside  of  the  tem- 
poral. 


Parr  II. 
SOCIETY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  GROUP  IN  GENERAL.       , 

I T  IS  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  society  as 
■  well  as  individuality  or  any  of  the  other 
things  considered  in  the  foregoing  chapters  is 
a  datum  of  history,  but  also  it  is  hardly  nec- 
essary to  say  that  thought  progresses  only  by 
changing  its  standpoint  and  its  machinery.  In 
this  second  part  of  our  present  study  it  is  as  if 
we  were  too  near  to  history  itself,  to  its  life 
and  our  identity  with  it  to  speak  of  mere  data 
of  history.  Society  and  social  change  are  his- 
tory itself.  With  them  we  are  ever  identify- 
ing the  progress  that  we  have  found  history  to 
be.  Political  science,  the  science  of  social 
life,  and  history  are  considered  nowadays  as 
one  and  the  same  thing. 

But  our  idea  of  society  must  not  be  superfi- 
cial. It  must  be  consistent  with  our  idea  of 
the  group  in  general,  just  as  in  considering  in- 
dividuality we  felt  obliged  to  think  of  atoms  as 
well  as  of  persons.  Human  society  is  a  group 
of  individuals  and  in  the  group  as  such  there 


98  PHIL  O  SO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

are  certain  characteristics  that  it  is  well  to  no- 
tice, so  to  speak,  without  any  political  preju- 
dices. 

So,  to  begin  with,  any  group  is  a  more  or 
less  definitely  organized  manifold  of  different 
individuals.  This  is  to  say  that  a  group  is  a 
differentiated  whole  whose  differences  con- 
tribute to  or  are  identical  with  its  unity.  A 
chair,  for  example,  is  a  group  of  many  things, 
but  even  such  of  the  parts  as  the  legs  or  the 
rounds  that  seem  ahke  in  themselves  are  all 
different  as  parts  of  the  chair.  A  circle  is  a 
group  of  a  number  of  arcs  or  of  a  number — of 
course  an  infinite  number — of  points  that  in 
themselves  are  all  alike  but  in  the  circle  differ- 
ent, the  unity  or  integrity  of  the  circle  re- 
quiring their  perfect  differentiation.  The  tenth 
dollar  in  a  sum  of  ten  dollars  is  different  from 
the  ninth  or  the  eighth,  because  ten  dollars  as 
a  group  will  satisfy  a  different  interest  from 
that  which  nine  or  eight  would  satisfy.  The 
family  circle,  the  nations  of  the  earth,  the  ob- 
jects in  a  room,  the  heavenly  bodies,  are  all 
groups  of  which  the  principle,  stated  above, 
that  unity  and  differences  are  inseparable,  is 
irrefutably  true.  Things  in  general,  if  seen 
as  many  are  different  and  if  seen  as  different 


THE  GROUP  IN  GENERAL.  99 

are  related  as  the  members  of  some  group. 
Not  that  the  relation,  the  organization  of  the 
differences  is  always  altogether  definite,  but 
simply  that  the  fact  itself  of  an  organic  differ- 
entiation is  essential  to  any  group. 

Any  group,  then,  is  a  group  with  parts  or 
members  that  are  the  related  means  to  some 
one  end  or  with  differences  that  co-operate  in 
some  one  function  or  activity.  On  any  other 
assumption  the  inseparableness  of  the  unity 
and  the  differences  would  be  meaningless, 
since  only  in  the  adaptation  of  means  to  end 
is  unity  made  to  be  intrinsic  to  differences. 
But  why  posit  an  end  as  a  function  or  activ- 
ity? Because  a  group  whose  differences  are 
also  its  unity  must  always  be  more  than  a 
formal  composition,  and  because  only  its  im- 
plication in  an  activity  can  make  it  more.  In 
itself  it  must  be  essentially  dynamic.  What 
holds  a  chair  together  but  gravity.?  Gravity, 
then,  is  the  process  to  which  the  chair  is  a 
means.  True,  somebody  of  a  very  practical 
turn  may  say  that  the  chair  is  held  together 
because  it  is  something  to  sit  in,  but  sitting  is 
only  one  of  many  other  adaptations  on  the 
part  of  living  creatures  to  the  force  of  gravity. 
So,  in  general,  the  end  to  which  any  group  is 


loo  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

a  means  is  a  positive  activity  which  the  group's 
differential  unity  both  belongs  to  and  shares 
in.  I  say  ' '  shares  in, ' '  for  I  think  no  one 
would  deny  of  the  chair — to  return  to  that — 
that  its  parts  exercise  the  force  of  gravity  as 
well  as  adjust  themselves  to  it. 

But  a  group  to  which  activity  is  essential, 
a  group  that  in  itself  is  dynamic,  being  the 
immanently  active  expression  of  unity  in  differ- 
ences or  of  differences  in  unity,  is  an  organ- 
ism. Is  this  to  say  that  any  group  lives?  It 
certainly  is,  but  not  on  the  endowment  plan. 
It  is  to  recognize  in  every  group  a  tension. 
The  tension  is  between  the  group's  own  local 
and  momentary  existence  and  the  larger  activ- 
ity in  which  the  group  shares  and  to  which  the 
group  is  a  means.  Thus,  the  chair  lives 
through  the  fact  of  its  being  in  a  tension  with 
gravity  as  a  universe  force.  Gravity  both 
holds  it  together  and  in  course  of  time  de- 
stroys or  disintegrates  it.  The  chair,  or  any 
other  group,  in  this  way  may  be  said  to  live  its 
own  death.  It  lives  its  own  death,  just  be- 
cause it  is  a  group  and  as  a  group  is  respon- 
sible intensively  to  itself  and  extensively*  to 
the  force  to  which  it  owes  its  existence.     Our 

*  Except  that  the  extensive  is  always  only  the  more  inten- 
sive. 


THE  GROUP  IN  GENERAL.  loi 

friend  of  the  practical  turn  would  no  doubt 
express  the  same  idea  by  saying  that  chairs 
have  come  and  gone,  new  and  different  and 
perhaps  better  chairs  arising  to  take  their 
place,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  activity 
of  sitting,  which  brought  them  into  life,  for 
the  sake  of  its  own  more  adequate  expression 
has  required  also  that  they  should  pass  away. 
Gravity,  however,  to  which  sitting  is  an  adap- 
tation, is  not  life — is  it?  Perhaps  not,  al- 
though gravity  has  something  to  do  with  the 
conservation  of  an  organic  universe.  Sitting 
is  not  life  either,  but  it  is  quite  in  order  to  sug- 
gest that  living  creatures  sometimes  sit  and,  as 
indicated  before,  in  doing  so  are  not  merely 
adapting  themselves  to  gravity  but  also  identi- 
fying themselves  with  it.  Too  often  we  for- 
get— do  we  not? — that  adaptation  is  always 
identification,  that  the  conditions  of  any  activ- 
ity always  share  positively  in  the  activity. 
Should  we  remember  this  at  all  times,  some 
unnaturally  difficult  problems  would  turn  as 
unnaturally  simple. 

And  in  any  case  the  group  as  a  group — and 
this  means  any  group — is  an  organism,  active 
and  alive  and  responsible,  but — to  repeat — not 
on  the  endowment  plan. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY. 

nr  HE  human  group  or  society  is  also  an 
'  organism,  active  and  alive  and  responsi- 
ble but  not  on  the  endowment  plan. 

From  a  chair  to  society !  This  is  a  jump 
indeed,  and  I  know  too  well  that  there  are 
many  who  will  promptly  refuse  to  take  it  even 
with  the  help  of  such  a  profound  insight  into 
the  nature  of  any  group  as  was  reached  in  the 
previous  chapter !  Still  I  do  not  despair  of 
getting  even  the  most  cautious  of  jumpers 
across  the  awful  chasm,  although  to  get  them 
over  I  shall  probably  have  to  do  more  than 
suggest  to  them  that  chairs  as  well  as  gravity 
have  played  their  part  and  are  still  playing 
their  part  in  the  life  and  consciousness  of  a 
sometimes  sedentary  human  society.  This  sug- 
gestion, however,  should  not  be  dismissed  as 
altogether  impertinent. 

Of  course  at  the  present  time  the  organic 
character  of  society  is  a  much  discussed  ques- 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  103 

tion,  and  as  is  usual  in  such  cases  the  discus- 
sion implies  an  ignorance,  an  incomplete 
knowledge,  of  the  things  discussed.  To  under- 
stand anything  is  to  have  to  limit  it  to  nothing, 
to  find  in  it  a  universe- truth.  To  say  that 
society  is  not  an  organism  and  that  some 
individual  mass  is  an  organism  is  not  yet  to 
know  just  what  an  organism  really  is.  But 
you  remind  me  that  most  if  not  all  thinkers 
,today  admit  the  organic  character  of  society. 
They  do  not,  however,  admit  it  unqualifiedly, 
and  their  qualifications  show  that  the  term  is 
so  imperfectly  understood  that  it  is  in  their 
thinking  at  war  with  itself,  meaning  two  things 
instead  of  only  one.  Society,  they  say,  is  an 
organism,  but  not  as  the  individual  is  an 
organism.  It  is  an  organism  only  ideally,  or 
only  spiritually,  or  only  psychologically,  or 
only  physically,  and  so  on,  with  some  rhyme 
possibly  but  not  much  reason.  The  term 
* '  only, ' '  like  fire,  is  very  useful  when  controlled 
but  very  dangerous  to  play  with. 

Herbert  Spencer  is  a  case  in  hand.  He  is 
willing  to  apply  to  society  the  name  organism, 
but  not  without  qualification,  not  to  the  detri- 
ment of  his  individualism;  and  in  consequence 
his  individuals  lose  their  own  organic  character. 


I04  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

Let  us  see  how  this  is.  He  draws  analogies 
between  the  organism — the  living  individual  of 
biology — and  society,  but  also  he  discovers 
points  of  difference  that  qualify  the  organic 
character  of  society  almost  out  of  existence. 
Thus,  society  and  the  organism  are  alike  in 
that  their  growth  brings  increase  in  mass, 
increase  in  complexity  of  structure,  and  in- 
crease in  the  interdependence  of  parts,  and  in 
that  the  whole  has  permanence  although  the 
parts  die,  but  different  in  that  society  as 
society,  unlike  the  organism,  has  no  distinct 
form,  no  continuous  tissue  and  no  local  con- 
sciousness, all  its  parts  or  members  being  con- 
scious, and  in  that  the  parts  of  society,  unlike 
those  of  the  organism,  are  free  to  move 
autonomously.  But  here  is  a  lot  of  false- 
hoods or  at  least  a  lot  of  statements  that  are 
flagrantly  superficial.  The  organism,  even  the 
individual  organism,  is  not  what  Spencer  says 
it  is  in  so  many  words.  Mass  as  mass  has 
nothing  to  do  with  organic  character,  nor  has 
mere  complexity,  and  the  whole  that  is  really 
permanent  is  not  something  that  can  even  for 
a  moment  be  separated  from  its  parts,  and  if 
the  real  organism,  the  individual  organism,  has 
such  a  distinct  form,  why  is  biology  still   busy 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  105 

over  her  microscopes  ?  Can  the  naked  eye  be 
trusted  in  the  case  of  society  when  it  is  not 
trusted  in  that  of  the  individual  ?  And  who 
has  ever  seen  real  continuity  ?  Visible  con- 
tinuity in  itself  does  not  make  or  unmake  an 
organism,  since  the  only  final  test  of  continuity 
is  in  expressed  relationship.  In  Spencer's 
sense  even  protoplasm  is  not  continuous. 
Furthermore,  in  regard  to  the  matter  of  con- 
sciousness, the  individual  organism  as  well  as 
society  is  conscious  in  all  of  its  members.  In 
other  words  sensation,  or  consciousness  gen- 
erally, is  a  function  of  the  individual  as  a 
whole,  not  the*special  action  or  condition  of 
certain  separate  organs.  And,  to  conclude 
this  arraignment  of  Spencer's  idea  of  the 
organism,  the  parts  of  the  individual  have  in 
reality  as  much  autonomy  as  the  members  of 
society.  A  difference  in  degree  there  may  be 
between  the  freedom  in  the  one  case  and  the 
freedom  in  the  other,  but  such  difference  in- 
stead of  denying  the  principle  that  is  involved 
only  asserts  it.  Only  when  the  members  of 
society  are  free  autonomously  to  move  through 
each  other  or  through  walls  and  to  lift  them- 
selves by  their  boot-straps  and  do  other  things 
in  violation  of    the  organizing  unity  of    their 


io6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

universe,  only  then  can  I  find  their  freedom, 
their  individualism,  different  in  kind  from  that 
of  the  parts  of  my  own  body  or  of  any  other 
living  mass. 

But  Spencer  can  be  met  also  on  his  own 
ground.  His  standpoint  is  a  physical  one,  and 
physical  science,  looking  at  the  life  of  society, 
at  the  body  in  which  that  life  is  expressed,  has 
no  trouble  at  all  in  finding  massiveness,  con- 
tinuity, localization,  and  restraint  or  confine- 
ment of  individuals,  which  Spencer  would 
make  the  criteria  of  organic  character,  in 
society.  Society,  then,  as  Spencer  himself 
uses  the  term,  is  as  organic  as  anything  else. 
Spencer  seems  to  me  like  a  man  who  has 
pushed  his  fingers  up  through  a  hole  in  a  sheet 
of  paper  and  looking  at  them  argues  to  indi- 
vidualism from  their  apparent  isolation  and 
autonomous  wriggling.  But  you  object  to 
such  a  comparison  ?  The  fingers,  you  grant, 
are  not  really  detached,  but  the  members  of 
society  are.  Detached,  perhaps;  but  in  any 
case  not  unrelated.  Stones,  too,  are  detached, 
but  for  the  sake  of  an  organizing  natural  law, 
not  in  spite  of  it. 

Spencer's  case  is  altogether  a  typical  one. 
Spencer,  like  many  others,  although  he  passes 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  107 

as  an  evolutionist,  is  not  enough  of  an  evolu- 
tionist to  identify  human  life  with  the  nature 
from  v^hich  it  is  supposed  to  have  sprung.  He 
makes  the  nature  of  man  something  by  itself. 
Like  the  other  forms  of  life,  with  which  he 
deals,  man  is  not  seen  as  in  himself  already 
adapted  to  the  presented  conditions  of  human 
activity.  Witness  the  negative,  the  irrational 
element  in  environment,  which  Spencer  calls 
the  Unknowable  and  which  can  not  but  have 
the  effect  of  separating  man  from  himself  or — 
as  the  same  thing — from  the  conditions  of  his 
life.  But  to  divide  man,  to  make  the  living 
man  and  the  material  man,  or  the  spiritual 
man,  two  separate  creatures  instead  of  one 
creature  is  at  once  to  put  the  organism, 
whether  individual  or  social,  wholly  out  of  the 
question.  An  organism  lives  the  life  of  its 
environment.  With  conditions  external  in 
their  nature  it  can  have  nothing  to  do;  or,  if 
it  does  relate  itself  to  them,  it  can  be  seen 
only  as  Spencer  sees  it,  namely,  in  terms  of 
massiveness,  continuity,  localization,  restraint 
of  its  members,  and  so  on,  and  this  is  to  say 
that  it  is  not  really  seen  at  all.  And,  as  with 
Spencer's,  so  with  anybody's  division  of  human 
nature.       It   puts    a   real    organic   character. 


I08  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

whether  of  individual  or  of  society,  wholly 
out  of  the  question.  The  concept  of  the 
organism,  like  that  of  evolution  to  which  it 
belongs,  depends  on  the  unity  of  all  the  phases 
of  life,  of  the  physical  and  the  animate  and 
the  rational  and  the  spiritual,  and  sociologists 
or  political  scientists  of  any  kind,  who  would 
deny  organic  character  to  society  or  who 
would  in  any  of  the  many  ways  qualify  their 
admission  of  the  term  organism  would  do  well, 
of  course  in  the  first  place  to  discover  if  they 
really  know  what  an  individual  organism  as 
an  organism  is,  but  especially  in  the  second 
place  to  determine  what  their  particular  divis- 
ion of  human  nature  is  and  how  far  they  are 
seriously  willing  to  make  it.  If  human  nature 
is  indivisible,  if  there  is  only  one  man  in  any 
of  us,  then  as  individuals  or  as  society .  or  as 
either  in  the  other  we  are  living  the  life  of  the 
conditions  of  our  life  and  this  is  but  to  say 
that  we  are  living  a  strictly  organic  life.  Fully 
to  realize  this  organic  life  we  must  expect  to 
have  to  go  deeper,  to  look  deeper,  than  human 
natu.e,  for  just  the  reason  suggested.  Human 
nature  is  more  than,  it  is  alwaj^s  deeper  than 
itself.  The  universe  is  in  it.  And  for  us,  who 
are  in  search  of  a  real  principle   and   accord- 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  109 

ingly  can  not  stop  with  anything  short  of  a 
real  principle,  no  depths  can  be  too  deep. 

Society,  then,  as  a  group  of  human  beings 
whose  nature  is  one  nature  and  is  one  with  all 
nature,  is  Kke  any  group;  it  is  an  organism. 
Wherever  the  members  of  any  group  are 
obliged  to  adjust  themselves  to  each  other  and 
to  their  environment  in  the  interests  of  an 
all-controlling,  all-including  law  or  process,  be 
the  law  or  the  process  physical — as  in  the  case 
of  gravity — or  psychical  or  spiritual  or  of  any 
other  character  you  like,  they  comprise  in  their 
nature  and  activity  what  is  essentially  an  or- 
ganism. 

And  an  organic  society,  furthermore,  has 
both  a  social  consciousness  and  a  social  will. 

Evidences  of  a  social  consciousness  are  in 
the  fact  of  a  common  environment;  in  the  fact, 
if  not  of  a  common  language,  at  least  of  dif- 
ferent languages  that  are  translatable  more  or 
less  easily;  in  the  fact  of  such  social  institu- 
tions as  the  state,  the  church,  the  school,  and 
the  factory;  and  in  the  fact  of  all  the  different 
means  of  intercourse,  the  instruments  of  com- 
munication and  of  transportation  and  the  like. 
These  evidences,  moreover,  are  all  reducible 
to  one,  to  the  simple  fact  of  the  community  of 


1 1  o  PHIL  O  SO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

nature  in  all  men  and  the  community  of  man 
with  all  nature.  Psychologist  and  political 
scientist  at  the  present  time  are  coming  to  look 
upon  environment,  the  object  or  the  content  of 
consciousness,  as  the  central,  the  organizing 
unity  of  all  the  different  means  to  a  social  lif  ^. 
They  see  it  as  the  social  institution  of  all  social 
institutions,  as  the  whole  of  which  language 
and  the  other  things  that  were  mentioned  are 
but  special  differentiated  expressions  or  rela- 
tions. 

But  one's  view  of  the  nature  of  the  social 
consciousness  will  depend  very  naturally  on 
what  one  supposes  the  relation  to  environment 
to  be.  To  speak  strictly,  the  unity  of  all  the 
different  means  to  a  social  life  in  environment 
is  not  a  possible  idea  without  a  clear  apprecia- 
ciation  of  the  unity  of  human  nature  and  of 
man  with  all  nature,  but  we  may  neglect  this 
necessity  of  thought  and  consider,  as  if  they 
were  equally  possible,  the  two  cases  of  those, 
first,  who  would  separate  man  from  some  or 
all  of  the  conditions  of  his  life — or  aspects  of 
his  environment — and,  second,  who  would 
recognize  positively  and  directly  the  unity  of 
man  and  the  sphere  in  which  he  lives.  In  the 
first  case,   the  case  of  the  separation,   as  has 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR   SOCIETY.         iii 

been  pointed  out  already,  neither  society  as 
society  nor  its  members  as  individuals  can  be 
supposed  to  have  a  genuinely  organic  charac- 
ter; and,  as  to  consciousness,  this,  in  the  indi- 
viduals is  a  mere  endowment  or  God-sent — 
when  not  devil-sent — gift  and  in  society  an 
equally  although  more  obviously  arbitrary  or 
irrational  and  so  unreal  possession.  The  indi- 
vidual is  conscious,  but  the  consciousness  is  not 
his;  and  the  consciousness  of  society  is  exter- 
nal to  the  humanity  of  society,  being  '  *  given, ' ' 
infallible,  and  referred  to  a  language  and  a 
system  of  other  institutions  that  are  as  dead  to 
those  who  use  them,  as  brutally  fixed  and  as 
intellectually  empty,  as  the  external  environ- 
ment in  general  to  which  they  belong,  and  that 
serve  therefore  either  to  reduce  the  members 
of  society  to  a  lifeless  level  or — which  in  effect 
is  the  same  thing— to  create  inviolable  differ- 
ences among  them  or  among  the  classes  into 
which  they  may  be  divided. 

Subjectively  consciousness  as  an  endowment 
is  always  localized  or  enthroned  in  some  par- 
ticular member  or  members,  and  at  first 
thought  it  seems  strange  that  those  who  have 
separated  man  from  the  sphere  of  his  life  and 
have  given  certain  of  man's  parts  an  arbitrary 


1 1 2  PHIL  O  SO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

right  to  his  consciousness  should  have  denied 
a  local  habitation  and  sometimes  even  a  name 
to  the  social  consciousness.  What  does  an 
absolute  monarchy  or  an  infallible  papacy  or 
an  arbitrary  individual  leadership  of  any  kind 
mean  but  a  social  consciousness  that  is  at  once 
an  endowment  and  a  localized  function  ?  Is  a 
ruling  individual — or  possibly  a  ruling  class — 
any  less  real  or  any  less  local  or  any  less  arbi- 
trary in  the  thought  or  consciousness  that  it 
exercises  than  the  brain  or  than  a  group  of 
special  sense-organs  ?  Given  a  monarchical  or 
a  feudalistic  psychology,  and  you  get  also  a 
monarchial  or  a  feudalistic  politics;  and  yet  the 
advocates  of  the  former  find  the  social  con- 
sciousness in  the  latter  a  mere  abstraction. 
This,  I  have  said,  seems  strange,  but  after  all 
the  case  is  the  same  as  that  of  Spencer's  organ- 
ism, which  was  denied  to  society  but  affirmed 
of  the  individual,  and  just  because  it  was  not 
a  genuine  organism  at  all.  Consciousness  on 
the  localized  endowment  plan  is  not  conscious- 
ness but  unconsciousness  or  mere  physical 
quality.  It  appears  to  be  one  of  the  offices  of 
the  life  and  nature  of  society  to  reveal  to  the 
individual  his  erroneous  views  of  himself. 
Above  Spencer's  inorganic  society  exposed  his 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  113 

individual  organism,  and  here  an  unconscious 
society  has  exposed  a  conscious,  a  selfishly 
conscious  individual. 

So,  almost  in  spite  of  ourselves,  we  are 
brought  to  our  second  case,  the  case  of  those 
who  would  recognize  positively  and  directly 
the  unity  of  man  and  the  sphere  in  which  he 
lives.  For  these  both  individual  and  society 
are  organic  and  consciousness,  at  once  indi- 
vidual and  social,  is  in  and  of  the  life  itself 
that  the  organism  expresses,  being  as  truly  a 
•condition  as  a  consequence  of  it,  and  is  referred 
to  a  language  and  to  other  institutions  that  are 
themselves  vital  incidents  of  it  and  grow  con- 
sistently with  it,  serving  neither  to  level  nor  to 
separate  individuals  or  classes,  but  to  unite 
them  by  sanctioning  and  mediating  their  pecu- 
liar differences.  Environment,  the  unity  of 
all  the  means  to  a  social  life  and  thought,  is 
looked  upon  and  is  to  be  resorted  to  as  the 
great  mediator  of  differences,  and  language, 
as  only  a  very  highly  developed  relation  to  en- 
vironment, can  no  longer  serve,  or  be  imag- 
ined to  serve,  as  a  medium  of  universally  valid 
truths,  a  repository  of  dogmas,  but  only,  so  to 
speak,  as  a  tertium  quid  in  which  individuals 
can  agree  to  differ.      The  days  are  past  when 


114  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

men  can  think  in  chorus.  They  have  gone 
with  the  days  of  the  immutable  species  and 
irresponsible  individual. 

Not  for  a  moment  can  anybody  conclude 
from  what  has  been  said  that  there  are  two 
consciousnesses,  an  individual  consciousness 
and  a  social  consciousness.  The  conscious 
individual  is  in  himself  socially  conscious  and 
the  conscious  society  is  in  itself  a  society  of 
conscious  individuals. 

But,  objects  somebody,  this  is  all  very  well; 
only  it  fails  to  account  for  that  undoubtable 
*  *  public  opinion, ' '  which  belongs  to  nobody, 
and  yet  the  searching  eye  of  which  is  felt  by 
everybody.  *  *  Public  opinion ' '  has  standards, 
I  am  reminded,  that  are  at  least  relatively 
fixed  and  arbitrary  or  irrational.  Well,  I  can 
only  say  in  reply  to  this,  what  I  think  is  in- 
controvertible, that  the  objector,  in  so  far  as 
he  finds  ' '  public  opinion ' '  fixed  and  irrational, 
is  identifying  it  with  phrases  or  customs  or 
institutions.  These,  however,  do  not  repre- 
sent the  real  public  opinion;  they  are  dying 
creatures  when  not  mature  wholly  unsubstan- 
tial ghosts.  In  just  so  far  as  opinion  becomes 
public  and  fixed,  it  loses  its  authority  in  con- 
sciousness.    The  mere  machinery  of  the  social 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.         115 

life  is  not  its  consciousness.  Sometimes  it 
may  seem  to  be,  but  every  one  knows  that  it 
is  not.  At  a  ' '  function, ' '  what  but  '  *  pubHc 
opinion"  and  its  commonplaces  ever  finds 
expression,  but  how  truly  every  one  is  think- 
ing of  what  he  does  not  hear  and  of  what  he 
does  not  say!  No  wonder  that  those  who 
would  identify  the  social  consciousness  with 
society's  conventionalities  can  see  it  only  as 
vague  or  abstract,  as  purely  spiritual  in  the 
sense  of  external  and  unreal. 

But  the  true  nature  of  the  social  conscious- 
ness will  be  still  more  clearly  understood  by 
us  when  we  have  seen  in  just  what  the  social 
will  consists.  Political  scientists  have  fallen 
into  the  habit  of  saying  that  the  state  must  not 
be  identified  with  the  government,  and  this 
seems  to  me  to  be  only  their  way,  or  one  of 
their  ways,  of  saying,  what  has  been  said 
above,'  that  the  social  consciousness  must  not 
be  identified  with  the  mere  machinery  of  the 
social  life,  and  what  is  now  to  be  said,  that  the 
social  will  must  not  be  identified  merely  with 
the  visible  law  or  authority.  If  the  will  and 
the  visible  authority  are  identified,  then  the 
will  becomes  the  interest  or  motive  of  an 
abstractly  universal    nature   rather   than    the 


Il6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

interest  or  motive  of  either  society  as  society 
or  any  of  its  particular  members.  Such  a  will 
is  a  purely  common  will  or — by  a  strange  but 
thoroughly  logical  connection  between  the 
opposites — the  separate  wills  of  wholly  unre- 
lated individuals.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that 
the  divisibility  of  the  social  will  and  the  much 
discussed  divisibility  of  sovereignty  are  one 
and  the  same  problem. 

Make  the  social  will  a  strictly  common  will 
and  you  get  in  return  only  the  most  extreme 
individualism  in  the  social  life,  for  the  com- 
mon will  that  is  responsible  to  no  interests  of 
its  own  is  bound  to  relate  itself  to  the  interests 
of  anybody  and  everybody.  Thomas  Hobbes 
and  even  Rousseau — or  perhaps  Rousseau 
more  clearly  than  anybody  else — found  a  com- 
mon social  will  and  absolute  individualism  the 
two  sides  of  one  and  the  same  truth. 

The  social  will,  however,  if  social  because 
common,  can  be  nobody's  will;  and,  if  will 
simply  that  it  may  be  somebody's,  can  not  be 
social.  To  separate  the  will  of  society  either 
in  the  way  of  an  absolute  monarchy  or  in  the 
way  of  a  purely  individualistic  democracy,  is 
to  lose  sight  of  the  true  nature  of  will  itself  or 
of  the   true    nature    of  both   society  and   its 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  117 

members.  Will  is  net  a  something  that  con- 
trols life  from  without,  just  as  society  and 
individuality,  as  the  two  recognized  sources  of 
control,  are  not  external  to  each  other.  Will 
and  life,  whether  the  life  of  the  individual  or 
the  life  of  society,  are  one  and  the  same 
thing.  The  natural,  immanent,  self-deter- 
mined compulsion  of  what  is  already  active  at 
any  time  and  place  is  the  only  will,  the  only 
social  will,  that  we  can  be  serious  about.  Is 
the  will  of  society,  forsooth,  different  from 
that  of  a  mother  with  her  child,  or  of  a  runner 
in  a  race,  or  of  a  machinist  at  his  work.?  Vol- 
untary acts,  individual  and  social,  are  only 
justifications  of  actual  conditions,  the  fulfil- 
ments of  existing  activities,  or  suppose  we  say 
almost  technically  the  reactions  of  adapted 
structures  on  their  sympathetic  environments. 
Society,  then,  being  an  organism,  and  the 
social  consciousness  being  social  only  because 
individual  and  individual  only  because  social, 
the  social  will  can  have  no  reality  except  as 
the  expression  of  the  existing  social  life,  the 
maintenance  of  the  organic  unity  of  individual 
interests  or  relations.  The  truly  social  will  is 
of  such  a  nature  that  it  is  a  necessity  inherent 
in  the  individual  will.  It  is,  in  short,  the  ten- 
sion of  a  social  individuality. 


1 1 8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTOR  Y. 

A  single  conclusion  from  this  account  of  the 
will  of  society  will  serve  to  illustrate  it.  Thus, 
if  the  will  of  society  is  what  we  say  it  is,  then 
we  should  be  able  to  show  definitely  that  the 
act  of  any  individual  not  only  is  the  act  of 
society  but  also  is  recognized  by  society  as  its 
own.  This,  however,  in  both  of  its  counts, 
can  be  shown  very  easily;  and  I  take  the  most 
unfavorable  case  available.  What  criminal 
ever  does  his  own  crime  alone.?  Nay,  who  are 
his  accomplices  but  those  who,  although  living 
in  the  law,  have  induced  his  act  by  helping  to 
make  it  possible.-*  The  social  life  in  which  a 
crime  is  possible  is  not  determined  by  the 
criminal  any  more  than  it  is  determined  by  his 
accusers.  His  act,  then,  is  their  act;  his  com- 
mission, their  omission.  The  mere  machinery 
of  the  social  life  is  that  in  which  crime  and 
lawfulness  act  hand  in  hand.  And  society 
knows  this;  society  constantly  recognizes  it. 
Just  as  no  parent  punishes  his  child  without 
feeling  that  he  should  himself  receive  the  pun- 
ishment, or  rather  without  actually  receiving 
it  in  some  way,  direct  or  indirect,  so  society 
takes  her  revenge  on  the  transgressor  only  to 
suffer  herself  and  to  realize  that  his  act  was 
as  much  hers  as  his.      Human  history  is  but  a 


THE  HUMAN  GROUP  OR  SOCIETY.  119 

startling  record  of  the  awakened  self-convict- 
ing consciousness  of  those  who  have  con- 
demned their  fellows,  and  their  awakening, 
moreover,  has  somehow  always  been  as  much 
the  cause  as  the  consequence  of  the  condemna- 
tion. Not  that  any  offense  is  to  be  supposed 
any  less  offensive  or  any  offender  any  less 
responsible  in  the  light  of  this  history,  but 
from  the  fact  that  society  shares  in  the  offenses 
of  her  members  no  offense  is  either  wholly 
unpardonable  or  wholly  invaluable.  In  the 
phrases  of  religion  the  conviction  of  sin  is  both 
forgiving  and  saving.  In  their  crimes,  then, 
as  well  as  in  their  lawful  deeds,  the  members 
of  society  are  servants  both  of  their  own  lives 
and  of  the  social  life  to  which  they  belong. 
As  was  indeed  said  here  many  pages  back, 
individuality  has  its  only  reality  in  a  process 
by  which  life  becomes  conscious  of  its  own 
conditions. 

So,  in  summary  of  this  chapter,  the  human 
group  or  society  is  an  organism;  it  is  con- 
scious in  its  individuals;  and  it  has  a  will  that 
is  not  common,  that  is  not  divided,  but  is  the 
compulsion  inherent  in  the  single  activity  of  its 
individual  members. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DOUBLE  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY. 

I  IKE  the  chair  or  Hke  any  group  society 
^  lives  its  own  death;  for  society,  any  so- 
ciety, has  a  responsibihty  that  is  at  once  in- 
tensive and  extensive,  at  once  to  its  own 
manifest  Hfe  and  to  nature*  as  a  whole,  and 
sooner  or  later  under  the  tension  of  this 
double  responsibility  it  can  not  but  outgrow 
itself. 

In  positive  history,  to  which  we  are  now 
ready  to  turn  with  a  directness  that  has  not 
been  possible  before  or  rather  that  has  not 
been  as  apparent  as  it  can  now  become,  any 
particular  society  is  particular  by  virtue  of  a 
domain,  a  consciousness  of  a  past,  and  a  dis- 
tinct activity.  Only  in  proportion  as  it  has 
these  is  it  separated  from  nature.  Its  pecu- 
liarity, it  is  true,  or  the  separation  is  often  ex- 
plained   by  reference   to   geographical  condi- 

*  I  say  nature  here  and  in  other  places,  because  the  term  is 
so  inclusive.  Nature  includes  not  only  other  societies  but  also 
other  manifestations  of  life  in  general,  and  it  includes  besides 
the  deeper  and  undiscovered  or  only  partially  discovered  life 
of  the  society  itself  that  finds  it  external. 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY.  121 

tions  or  to  other  physical  conditions  and  some- 
times by  reference  to  a  divine  guidance,  but  in 
the  special  meanings  usually  intended  neither 
of  these  references  can  be  allowed  here.  The 
determination  can  not  come  from  without, 
whether  from  a  designing  God  or  from  an  ex- 
ternal nature.  Peculiar  environing  conditions 
can  not  of  themselves  be  said  to  make  pecu- 
liar societies  when  human  nature  is  in  itself  as 
broad  and  as  deep  as  the  whole  to  which  it 
belongs,  when  man  and  nature  or  nature  and 
man  are  one.  Moreover — and  this  comes 
near  to  being  only  the  converse  of  what  has 
just  been  said — for  a  society  to  have  become 
peculiar  or  individual,  for  it  to  have  become 
separated  from  nature,  is  for  it  also  to  have 
transcended  itself,  to  have  come  into  a  con- 
flict that  is  indifferently  describable  as  with 
nature  or  with  itself.  Has  it  a  certain  terri- 
tory.? The  boundaries  were  drawn  only  to  de- 
fine a  developed  and  recognized  relation  to 
the  life  beyond  them.  Has  it  a  treasured 
past.?  It  has  begun  to  realize  that  it  sprang 
from  a  life  that  was  before  it  was.?  Or  has  it 
a  special  and  consciously  conducted  pursuit 
such  as  agriculture,  or  herding,  or  commerce, 
or  anything  else  you  like.?     The  pursuit  has  an 


1 22  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

already  appreciated,  an  already  determining 
relation  to  the  other  activities  of  nature's  life. 
Thus,  in  any  one  of  the  three  ways,  in  which 
we  can  see  the  isolation  of  a  society,  the  limit 
is  set  only  as  it  is  transcended.  Consider  how 
merely  in  becoming  Greek  the  Greek  people 
entered  into  an  ever  strengthening,  not  a 
weakening  relation  to  the  Barbarians;  and, 
similarly,  the  Jewish  people  to  the  Gentiles; 
and  we  American  people  to  the  peoples  east 
and  west,  north  and  south  of  our  national 
borders. 

A  peculiar  society,  then,  is  not  really  an 
isolated  society,  and  in  expressing  itself  it  is 
bound  to  maintain  both  sides  of  its  responsi- 
bility. It  can  not  escape  the  conflict  with  its 
own  individuality.  To  the  casual  observer 
expression  of  self  might  be  expected  only  to 
intensify  an  original  isolation,  but  casual  ob- 
servation is  not  to  be  trusted,  for  expression 
even  while  intensifying  not  an  original  isola- 
tion but  an  original  individuality  is  also  affirm- 
ing ever  more  directly,  ever  more  positively 
the  relation  between  the  individual  and  what 
is  without.  This  is  almost  paradoxical,  and 
yet  what  thoughtful  historian  has  ever  failed 
to  recognize  that  throughout  the  course  of  his- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY.  123 

tory  the  conquerors  and  the  conquered  in  any 
struggle  have  shared  with  each  other  both 
their  victory  and  their  defeat?  But  let  us  see 
for  ourselves. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  whenever  a 
society  awakens  to  a  sense  of  its  own  import- 
ance and  so  to  a  sense  of  its  opposition  to  the 
life  without  it  enters  upon  a  more  intense 
expression  of  itself,  and  this  would  seem  to 
lead  to  a  growing  separation  instead  of  to 
a  growing  identification  of  the  inner  and 
the  outer,  but  a  result  must  always  be 
true  to  its  origin  and  in  the  case  in  hand  the 
origin  is  as  internal  to  the  society  involved  as  it 
is  external.  The  awakening  and  the  opposition 
are  due  as  much  to  a  motive  at  home  as  to  a 
stimulus  abroad.  The  story,  I  say,  is  the 
same  as  that  of  the  chair,  which  gravity  holds 
together  and  which  gravity  destroys.  The 
people  themselves  have  done  something  to 
make  the  conflict,  not  the  conflict  comes 
as  if  out  of  a  clear  sky;  and  the  more  intense 
the  ensuing  self-expression  becomes  the  more 
truly  does  the  society  come  into  a  recognized 
conflict  with  itself  and  so  even  invite  attack 
from  without.  Indeed,  in  ways  that  are  start- 
ling when  first  observed,  a  society  that  inten- 


124  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

sifies  its  own  individuality,  that  would  even 
isolate  itself,  does  but  co-operate  with  its  op- 
ponents in  bringing  about  some  kind  of  a  rev- 
olution in  its  own  life,  and  the  strange  co-opera- 
tion although  for  a  time  held  from  view  is  not 
by  any  means  unseen  from  the  beginning  and 
in  the  end  it  comes  to  be  more  or  less  directly 
and  openly  avowed.  Intensification  of  indi- 
viduality implies — does  it  not? — the  mere 
cultivation  of  one's  peculiar  life,  a  living  in 
one's  own  way  simply  for  the  sake  of  living  in 
one's  own  way,  and  upon  this  plan,  upon  the 
plan  that  turns  life  into  a  cult,  formalism  and 
disintegration  are  sure  to  ensue. 

But,  again,  a  people  finds  itself  confronted 
with  a  great  war,  a  great  danger.  So  great  is 
the  danger  that  an  invasion  may  be  threat- 
ened. And  who  brought  on  the  war.**  So  far 
as  I  know,  no  honest  historian  has  ever  exon- 
erated either  of  the  parties  to  a  war.  A  war 
springs  out  of  the  expression  of  some  vital 
relation  between  the  contestants,  out  of  a 
community  of  nature,  out  of  some  common 
interest.  An  approaching  enemy,  moreover, 
even  when  barbarian  or  wholly  uncivilized,  is 
sure  to  bring  the  reproach  of  a  forgotten  past, 
the  call  to  a  neglected  duty;  is  sure  to  arouse 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY.  125 

a  dormant  conscience.  Should  the  hosts  of 
China  come  against  us  today,  just  this  would 
be  true  of  their  coming;  and  just  this  was  very 
true  when  Xerxes  and  the  others  moved  upon 
Greece.  And  how  does  a  war  affect  a  people.^ 
It  affects  them  exactly  as  any  activity  that  they 
feel  responsible  for  has  to  affect  them.  It 
affects  them  exactly  as  reproval,  sense  of  neg- 
lect, and  aroused  conscience  are  always  eifec- 
tive.  They  get  bravery.?  Yes,  and  also 
bravado.  Strength }  And  conceit.  Unity .? 
And  discord.  Patriotism?  And  treachery. 
Was  ever  a  war  that  did  not  bring  both  the 
one  and  the  other  of  these  things? 

War,  then,  which  is  as  much  a  conflict  with 
self  as  with  an  enemy  without,  which  rises  as 
individuality  arises,  and  is  indeed  only  indi- 
viduality's conflict  with  itself,  exhibits  to  us  a 
process  by  which  a  society  may  be  said  to  be 
put  beside  itself,  or  to  be  alienated  from  itself. 
From  its  very  inception  war  casts  discredit  on 
the  life  of  the  people  by  making  them,  as  never 
before,  conscious  of  what  they  are  doing.  The 
life,  although  discredited,  may  long  continue, 
but  ever  more  and  more  for  appearance's  sake 
only.  The  common  cause  that  the  war  makes 
is  weakening  to  all  the  personal  and  sectional 


126  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

differences  upon  which  the  society  has  always 
depended,  and  it  serves  accordingly  to  make 
the  people  external  to  their  own  activity,  or, 
as  said  above,  to  alienate  the  society  from 
itself.  The  more  definite  consciousness  of 
what  they  have  been  doing  comes  with  a  de- 
crease in  the  sense  of  responsibility  to  it.  In 
short,  from  its  very  inception,  a  war  brings 
with  it  into  the  life  of  the  people  an  ever 
strengthening  undercurrent  of  what  is,  sooner 
or  later,  recognized  as  cosmopolitanism,  or 
world-wide  interest,  and  in  the  end  an  entire 
civilization  may  be  swept  away  thereby.  And 
if  a  world-wide  interest  is  what  induces  the 
war,  what  other  outcome  should  be  expected 
than  just  this  of  a  more  clearly  defined  world- 
wide interest.  War,  like  conflict  in  general, 
is  only  the  definition  of  activity. 

Hereafter  we  shall  have  to  follow  the  pro- 
cess of  society's  alienation  from  itself,  in  con- 
siderable detail,  but  for  the  present  the  process 
itself,  as  we  have  it,  suggests  to  us  a  way  of 
reducing  the  activity  of  a  society,  in  which  it 
meets  its  double  responsibility,  to  certain 
stages.  First,  there  is  the  stage  of  society's 
at-one-ness  with  self;  second,  of  its  complete 
alienation  from  self;  and,  third,  of  its  restora- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY.  127 

tion  to  self.  Of  course,  of  the  third  stage  we 
have  not  yet  seen  anything  except  by  impHca- 
tion,  but  its  general  nature  is  evident  enough. 
In  positive  history  the  three  are  marks  of  the 
orient  that  was,  the  Occident  that  is,  and  the 
reunion  of  the  two  that  not  yet  is;  or,  within 
narrower  limits,  of  the  Greek  life  that  was,  the 
Roman  life  that  was  and  still  is,  and  the  Chris- 
tian— or  European-American — that  is  or  is 
coming  to  be;  or,  still  more  narrowly,  of  the 
colonial  life  in  our  own  history,  the  period  of 
sectionalism — have  we  passed  it  yet.? — and  the 
future  to  which  we  look  and  which  even  now 
we  think  we  see. 

These  stages,  then,  are  our  next  concern. 
To  begin  with,  we  shall  define  them  somewhat 
fully,  each  for  itself,  and  in  its  relation  to  the 
others;  and  then  having,  as  it  were,  deter- 
mined our  landmarks,  we  shall  give  special 
attention  to  the  transitions,  to  the  alienation 
as  a  process  that  is  teeming  with  important 
details  and  to  the  restoration  that  is  not  less 
important  to  us  and  that  is  indeed  the  process 
in  which  we  are  likely  to  see  the  life  of  our 
own  time. 

But  before  we  turn  to  these  new  interests 
there  is  something  that  should  be  said,  by  way 


1 28  PHTL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

of  caution,  of  this  reduction  of  a  process  to  its 
stages.  Thus,  in  the  first  place,  a  series  of 
stages  must  always  be  somewhat  schematic. 
The  three  stages  of  a  society's  activity  are  all 
of  them,  even  the  second  one,  extremes.  Ex- 
tremes, however,  are  never  found  in  real  life, 
and  when  we  think  of  them  they  are  significant 
only  for  the  principle  which  they  embody,  only 
for  the  activity  which  they  abstractly  define. 
Sometimes  we  describe  a  curve  by  its  stages. 
Thus,  we  say  it  begins  here;  it  reaches  a  max- 
imum or  minimum  here;  and  it  ends  here;  and 
these  stages  appear  to  us  different  even  in 
kind;  but  they  are  only  the  terms  of  a  relation- 
ship expressed  in  what  is  a  perfectly  uniform 
process.  As  with  a  described  curve,  then,  so 
with  a  recounted  history.  The  past  as  a  first 
stage  is  but — and  here  is  a  reminiscence — a 
contemporary  of  the  present,  and  the  future  as 
a  last  stage  is  also  but  a  contemporary  of  the 
present,  while  the  present  itself  as  the  interme- 
diate stage  is  the  activity  in  which  the  relation- 
ship of  the  other  two  is  in  expression.  Fur- 
thermore there  is  a  sense,  not  unfamiliar  to  us, 
and  highly  important  to  all  who  would  avoid 
any  misconceptions,  in  which  the  stages  of  any 
process  are  materially  as  well  as  formally  co- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  SOCIETY.  129 

existent.  Indeed  formal  coexistence  and  formal 
sequence  alike  have  been  impossible  to  us. 
The  sequent  and  the  coexistent  are  one,  action 
being  but  the  expression  in  sequence  of  the 
persistent  relations  of  the  coexistent.  Thus, 
is  the  orient  as  indicative  of  a  life  at  one  with 
itself — -the  first  stage — or  was  W.  Both.  And 
is  the  reunion  of  Occident  and  orient — the 
third  stage — or  is  it  to  be?  Both.  And, 
finally,  in  the  relation  of  the  sequent  to  the 
coexistent  we  see  once  more  the  danger  of  too 
arbitrarily  identifying  the  stages  of  a  process 
with  localities.  To  repeat  from  above  what 
was  but  another  way  of  expressing  the  thought 
here,  peculiar  environing  conditions,  in  other 
words,  peculiar  localities  can  not  of  themselves 
be  said  to  make  peculiar  societies  when  the 
human  nature  out  of  which  societies  are  built 
is  as  broad  and  as  deep  as  the  whole  to  which 
it  belongs.  In  space  and  in  time  alike  whole 
and  part,  unity  and  difference,  the  undeter- 
mined and  the  local  or  momentary  can  not  be 
separated.  Coexistences  are  materially  cotem- 
porary  and  sequences  are  only  the  expression 
of  the  organic  unity  of  coexistences. 

Is  this  too  metaphysical  or  too  philosophical 
even  for  the  philosophers  themselves.?     Pos- 


I30  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTOR  V. 

sibly,  but  I  cannot  doubt  that  such  of  them  as 
will  think  as  well  as  read  will  find  a  truth  in  it. 
The  language  is  simple  enough  and  it  means 
exactly  what  it  says.  Science,  it  seems  to  me, 
after  busying  herself  so  long  with  stages  or 
moments  or  degrees,  needs  to  be  aroused  to  a 
real  responsibility  to  her  own  words.  Stages 
in  themselves  are  not  history  any  more  than 
positions  are  a  curve  or  than  places  are  a  jour- 
ney. History  transcends  its  stages  and  its 
localities  by  persistently  contemporizing  and 
universalizing  them. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  STAGES  OF  SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY. 

7TS  already  given,  the  three  stages  of  a  society's 
'^  activity  are  those  of  its  at-one-ness  with 
self,  of  its  alienation  from  self,  and  of  its 
restoration  to  self;  and  we  found  them  signifi- 
cant, not  in  themselves,  but  only  in  their 
relationship  or  in  the  single  activity  that  they 
define.  For  purposes  of  discussion,  however, 
we  have  to  keep  them  apart;  and  here,  with 
the  philosopher's  license,  we  may  even  assign 
to  each  one  of  them  its  own  peculiar  formula; 
to  the  first:  what  is,  is,  which  is  the  formula 
of  life  as  naive;  to  the  second:  what  is  not,  is, 
the  formula  of  life  as  external  to  itself  or  sub- 
ject to  the  unnatural  or  supernatural;  and 
again  to  the  third:  what  is,  is,  which,  although 
verbally  a  repetition,  is  here  the  formula,  not 
of  the  naive,  but  of  the  supernatural  naturalized 
or  of  the  natural  as  rationally  free. 

But  the  stages  of  a  society's  activity,  the 
stages  of  social  evolution,  have  something 
besides  these  interesting  mottoes.     They  have 


132  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

incidents  or  conditions.  Accordingly  our  task 
is  now  to  discover  exactly  what  the  incidents 
are  in  each  case.  Of  course,  the  incidents  as 
they  appear  will  illustrate  the  mottoes,  but  the 
mottoes  need  the  incidents  to  make  them  real. 
So,  entering  upon  our  task,  we  are  to  ask  of 
each  one  of  the  three  stages  the  following 
questions:  Who  is  the  typical  individual? 
Upon  what  is  sovereignty  based?  What  is  the 
natural  form  of  government?  Of  what  charac- 
ter is  law?  What  is  the  true  form  of  property? 
What,  of  literature?  And  what,  of  religion? 
These  are  searching  questions,  and  although 
they  involve  us  in  a  discussion  that  may  prove 
a  little  tedious  on  account  of  its  verbal  repeti- 
tions, or,  let  us  say  on  account  of  the  rattle  of 
its  machinery,  the  work  itself — even  with  the 
noise — is  well  worth  our  while. 

In  the  first  stage,  that  of  society's  at-one- 
ness  with  itself,  the  personal  individual,  the 
social  type,  is  the  naive  or  unreflective  laborer. 
The  term  laborer,  however,  is  almost  too 
specific  or  too  technical,  but  sufBce  it  to  say 
that  no  distinctions  of  class  are  intended.  The 
basis  of  sovereignty  is  the  social  life  itself;  the 
life,  this  is  to  say,  rather  than  the  will,  since  a 
social  will    has  not  yet    been   aroused.     The 


SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY.  133 

form  of  government  is  that  of  a  direct  mon- 
archy, which  is  also  a  direct  democracy,  as 
illustrated  in  patriarchism,  or  perhaps  in  the 
early  Greek  communities  whose  kings  {BamXeiq) 
were  the  direct  agents  of  the  people.  Law  is 
personal  command.  Property  consists  in  land 
or  nature  in  general,  held  in  common,  and  in 
the  products  of  nature,  which  are  exchanged 
through  barter,  there  being  no  selected  medium 
of  exchange.  As  to  literature,  properly  speak- 
ing, there  is  none,  although  in  ballads  and 
stories  or  yarns  of  a  traditional  and  often 
mythical  character  that  pass  from  mouth  to 
mouth  the  germs  of  a  literature  are  present. 
And,  lastly  the  religion  is  naturistic  or — for 
this  seems  a  better  word — absolutely  simple, 
being  without  question  and  without  dogma. 
God  is  near  to  man;  nay.  He  and  man  are  one. 
A  golden  age,  you  say.?  Yes,  and  significant 
exactly  as  that  is  significant.  Of  it,  as  well  as 
of  each  of  the  two  other  stages,  we  must 
remember  that  it  is  an  extreme,  a  limit,  and 
so  in  a  sense  only  a  philosopher's  fancy,  and 
even  to  illustrate  it  as  a  whole  or  in  any  of  its 
parts — as  occasionally  I  have  tried  to — is  to  be 
almost  untrue  to  it,  to  force  it  perhaps  a  little 
ahead  of  itself.     But  without  illustration,  you 


134  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

insist,  it  is  empty,  meaningless.  So  it  is,  until 
we  can  observe  it  from  the  standpoint  of 
another  stage. 

In  the  second  stage,  then,  the  stage  of  the 
alienation,  the  typical  individual  is  the  soldier, 
again  to  use  a  technical  term  without  intending 
any  distinction  of  class.  The  soldier  in  gen- 
eral is  he  who  lives  beside  himself,  whose 
activity  is  not  his  own,  who  belongs  to  a  soci- 
ety that  is  physically  a  mere  mechanism  of 
differences  established  from  without  and  spir- 
itually— the  spiritual  being  that  which  is  not, 
the  external — a  perfect  community,  a  company 
of  individuals  all  alike.  Living  beside  himself, 
alienated  from  himself,  he  is  ready  at  any 
moment  to  die,  his  very  alienation  being  a 
sanction  of  any  change,  however  violent,  in 
his  life.  In  a  society  of  soldiers,  further,  the 
sovereignty  rests  on  worldly  might,  which  is 
purely  physical  force,  or  on  spiritual  authority. 
In  history,  when  God  has  appointed  the  king, 
might  has  always  been  a  basis  of  right;  and 
naturally  enough,  because  might  is  only  exter- 
nal authority,  as  it  were,  in  the  flesh.  Might 
is  only  the  reality  of  the  spiritual.^  But,  next, 
the  government  is  an  absolute  monarchy,  the 

*  Cf .  pp.  63-64. 


SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY.  135 

monarch — a  soldier  himself — being  not  a 
worldly  individual,  but  the  universal  individual, 
and  in  this  character  even  representative  of  his 
subjects,*  since  in  a  society  where  all  are  spir- 
itually equal  any  one — when  physically  and 
spiritually  equipped — can  represent  all.  And 
the  law  is  given,  traditional,  statutory;  not  the 
mandate  of  an  individual,  for  that  would  make 
it  worldly  and  so  would  deny  the  alienation, 
but,  if  I  may  borrow  the  term,  scriptural,  and 
not  with  any  mixture  of  equity,  for  that  too  is 
worldly  or  responsible  to  differences.  Property 
consists  in  mere  domain  and  in  money  as  some 
simple  in  the  sense  of  directly  derived  or  un- 
changed product  of  nature,  both  of  these  being 
abstract  or  universal,  or  suppose  we  say — 
appropriately  enough — unworldly  forms  of 
property.  Mere  domain — unimproved  nature 
— and  coin  are  property  freed  of  all  the  specific 
relations  of  life.  Infinite  possibilities  of  rela- 
tion are  in  them,  but  for  themselves  alone  they 
are  the  natural  possessions  of  the  unworldly 
individual,  exacting  no  worldly  duties,  depend- 
ing on  no  worldly  ties,  being  valuable  merely 

*The  fact,  here  plainly  indicated,  that  even  absolute 
monarchy,  is  a  form  of  representative  government  is  one  indi- 
cation among  many  of  the  ways  in  which  these  stages  of 
society's  growth  are  as  contemporary  as  sequent, 


1 36  PHIL  O  SOPHY  OF  HI  ST  OR  Y, 

in  possession,  and  being  freely,  that  is,  without 
danger  of  loss  or  injury,  inheritable.  The 
soldier,  obviously,  must  have  a  freely  inherit- 
able property.  Payment  in  anything  else  he 
cannot  but  refuse.  In  history,  now  to  give 
the  dangerous  illustration,  when  property  has 
had  the  form  of  landed  estates  and  coin,  mere 
possession  constituting  right  and  might  being 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  possession,  the 
property-owner  has  worked  his  land  and  earned 
his  coin  only  through  slaves  or  servants  of 
some  kind,  being  himself  a  military  lord,  not 
a  ploughman  and  not  even  a  **  gentleman- 
farmer;"  and  in  just  this  separation  of  master 
and  laborers,  of  will  and  activity,  we  can  see 
the  social  implications  of  property  as  here  con- 
sidered. With  society  alienated  from  itself 
both  are  will  and  activity  necessarily  apart 
and  apart  also  are  the  agents  and  the  return 
for  what  they  do.  But,  to  continue,  to  this 
second  stage  belong  a  given,  ready-made  liter- 
ature and — in  the  technical  sense — a  revealed 
religion.  Language  has  no  life  of  its  own,  but 
it  is  the  repository  of  truth  as  something  abso- 
lute and  unchanging;  and  perhaps  in  a  single 
book  or  in  a  single  man  religion  may  have  its 
beginning  and  its  end.     Original  thinking  is  as 


SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY,  137 

unnatural  as  it  is  sacrilegious.  Copying,  en- 
grossing, memorizing,  and  possibly  logical 
gymnastic  and  textual  annotation  are  as  far  as 
the  intellectual  class — the  priesthood — can 
ever  allow  itself  to  go,  but  these  things  it  will 
do  with  a  faithfulness  and  a  patience  that  only 
a  soldier's  implicit  devotion  can  make  possible. 
Is  not  language  the  Word,  the  Incarnate 
Word.? 

But,  lastly,  when  as  in  the  third  stage  society  is 
restored  to  itself,  the  typical  individual  is  the 
mechanic — again  without  intending  any  dis- 
tinctions of  class — in  whom,  as  it  were,  the 
dead  soldier  has  his  resurrection.  Thus  the 
mechanic  is  the  skilled  laborer.  Not  only  like 
the  soldier  has  he  a  place  in  society,  but  also  is 
he  directly  or  consciously  and  voluntarily 
responsible  to  it.  He  is  as  much  a  leader  as 
one  led.  He  has  identified  himself  with  the 
freedom  of  the  military  life  to  which  as  only  a 
mechanical  part  he  had  previously  belonged. 
The  activity  in  which  he  shared  slavishly  is 
become  his  activity.  In  short,  he  has  brought 
his  other  self,  his  unworldly  self,  in  which  he 
had  been  so  isolated,  into  the  world,  finding  it 
real  and  as  spiritual  as  real  in  the  life  that  is. 
And  with  this  finding  on  his  part  the  society  to 


138  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

which  he  belongs  and  the  social  life  are  no 
longer  separated,  but  are  restored  to  each 
other.  The  state  and  its  members  become 
one,  and  in  the  social  will,  as  the  will  of  a  self- 
conscious  organism,  the  sovereignty  resides, 
and  the  government  takes  the  form  of  a  con- 
stitutional democracy,  in  which  the  constitution 
is  adaptive  or  elastic,  being  regarded  not  as 
something  to  which  society  owes  its  existence, 
but  as  something  which  owes  its  existence  to 
society,  as  something  which  is  definitive  only, 
not  creative.  Law,  in  the  special  sense,  is 
also  elastic,  equity — conspicuously  absent  in 
the  second  stage — being  here  the  moving  spirit; 
and  property  is  either  machinery,  which  com- 
prises all  improved  natural  resources,  all 
applications  of  natural  force,  or  credit,  which 
is  that  in  which  productive  power  or  skill  is 
made  the  sole  right  to  property  and  so  also  the 
sole  medium  of  exchange.  So  long  as  any 
single  natural  product  or  commodity,  such  as 
gold  or  silver  or  anything  else,  is  the  medium, 
or  as  unimproved  nature  is  the  form  of  prop- 
erty, just  so  long  mere  possession  constitutes 
the  right  to  property  and  ownership  is  also  an 
arbitrary  or  military  leadership  of  labor,  the 
will  or  power  of  action  as  well  as  its  return 


SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY,  139 

being  separated  from  action  itself;  but  for  the 
freed  individualism,  the  skilled  labor,  of  this 
third  stage,  in  which  no  man  can  be  set  beside 
himself,  or  alienated  from  himself,  the  arbi- 
trary medium,  whether  of  the  silver-heresy,  or 
the  gold-dogma  or  the  paper-lunacy,  is  impos- 
sible. Credit,  then,  be  it  said  again,  as  the 
subjective  or  personal,  and  machinery  as  the 
objective  or  natural  form  of  property,  credit 
being  the  recognized  capacity  of  production 
and  machinery  the  material  means  to  the  pro- 
duction, are  here  the  only  possible  forms  of 
property.  In  them  capitalist  and  laborer 
become  one.  That  property,  however,  so 
conditioned  depends  on  a  well-defined  social 
consciousness,  on  a  freedom  of  prompt  and 
accurate  information  the  world  over,  and  on 
an  untrammeled  movement  and  interaction 
among  individuals,  on  a  freedom  of  safe  and 
rapid  transportation  to  any  point,  is  self-evi- 
dent. In  olden  times  all  roads  led  to  Rome, 
and  the  day  came  when  over  the  roads  hurried, 
not  Rome's  couriers  and  not  Rome's  armies,  but 
barbarians,  who  dealt  a  fatal  blow  to  militarism; 
and  today  we  see  how  roads  and  wires  are  break- 
ing the  strength  of  the  military  industrialism 
that  our  unskilled  labor  and  our  irresponsible 


1 40  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

capital*  have  helped  each  other  to  maintain  so 
long.  But,  finally,  in  the  third  stage  literature 
is  mediative,  language  being  no  dead  and  for- 
mal thing,  but  alive  and  responsive,  and  the 
thought  expressed  in  it  being  no  abstract  truth, 
fixed  and  as  meaningless  as  fixed,  but  a  mov- 
ing, liberating  idea  that  is  one  with  life  itself; 
and  religion  is  a  natural  religion,  in  which  God 
is  immanent  in  what  his  creatures  do,  their 
acts  having  a  positive  share  in  his  creation, 
and  in  which  the  truth  that  faithfully  and 
responsibly  defines  the  condition  of  life  to 
those  that  live  is  the  only  real,  because  the 
only  effective  or  answerable  prayer.  Worship 
is  skill  in  the  social  life,  not  ritual;  and  the 
church  is  society  itself,  not  a  mass  of  bricks 
and  stained  glass. 

Utopian  vision.?  Yes,  but  also  an  actual 
condition,  a  present  already  active  impulse 
as  well  as  a  future  dream ;  a  life,  in  which  the 
present  is  now  transcending  its  own  limitations; 
and  so  worthy  of  our  attention. 

And  here  I  will  repeat  the  illustrations,  that 
were  suggested  before,  of  the  three  stages  of 
society's  growth:  the  orient,  the  Occident,  and 

*  By  irresponsible  capital  I  mean  capital  to  which  posses- 
sion is  the  only  basis  of  right. 


SOCIETY'S  ACTIVITY,  141 

the  now  rising  restoration  of  each  to  the  other; 
Greek  Hfe,  Roman  Hfe,  and  the  moving  Chris- 
tianity of  Europe  and  America  today;  and 
colonial  America,  sectional  America — covering 
the  period  from  the  Revolution  through  to  the 
RebelHon,  perhaps  to  the  present  time — and 
America  as  a  truly  organized  democracy.  But, 
as  has  been  said  in  so  many  words,  such  illus- 
trations are  likely  to  be  as  obscure  as  luminous. 
Still  we  may  use  them  if  we  use  them  cau- 
tiously, ever  remembering  that  the  sequent  and 
the  coexistent  are  fundamentally  one.  The 
past  is  always  present  in  another  locality,  and 
coexistences,  in  spite  of  their  local  differences, 
are  materially  as  well  as  formally  contempor- 
ary. History  ever  transcends  both  its  stages 
and  its  localities  by  persistently  contemporizing 
the  former  and  universalizing  the  latter. 


i 

3 

Naturistic, 

simple.     God 

and  nature 

one,  and  very 

near  to  man. 

Supernatural, 

revealed. 

Manifest  in  a 

single  book  or 

in  a  single 

man. 

Natural,    but 
from  the  super- 
natural being 
naturalized. 
God  immanent 
in  humanity. 

O 
H 

Pi 
W 

.3 

Sills 

<H|J|||.| 

2^  Q.A  '>«^*: 
a    "ua  bOG-r 

1?^ 

ill  M% 

c-a  o  ao  «  X 

a.     * 

:lM!li 

Qoo     Pio," 

1  till  oil 

j3.-t;.2  a  rt  «  «  *^  S 

O 

< 

13     .G 

CO  <u 

rt  >  « 

•si-si 

is 

o  w 

a  u     -2 

g  o-:H  §"5  s-G 

o.^  "':3  o  -o 

n>  oj  o  a-«  >  <u 

<u  V  en  C 

fl.t:  o  o  Q.iS-a  M 

lolls 

«5  OS  O 

H 

u 

.>«  o  "  E 

.w'o  o  a 
"■g  a  °  =■ 

iS-agl 

ho;  So 

O 

< 

t-4 

Jii 

CHAPTER   X. 

THE  PROCESS   OF  SOCIETY'S    ALIENATION   FROM 
ITSELF. 

NOW  that  we  have  the  landmarks  of  a 
society's  progress  so  well  defined,  we  can 
follow  the  course  of  it  in  greater  detail.  The 
processes  of  alienation  and  restoration  that 
make  the  transition  from  the  first  stage  to  the 
second  and  from  the  second  to  the  third 
respectively  are  most  important,  and  by  the 
continuity  or  self-consistency  that  will  be  man- 
ifested in  them,  will  help  to  make  the  real  sig- 
nificance of  the  stages  themselves  still  more 
definite  to  us.* 

Of  the  first  of  these  two  transitional  pro- 
cesses we  have  already  had  at  least  a  general 
view.  In  a  very  general  way  we  have  seen 
how  social  individuation  involves  territorial 
and   historical    and    industrial   consciousness, 

*  Recall,  too,  from  above  this  statement:  «*  The  peculiar 
relation  between  the  sequent  and  the  coexistent  that  the  con- 
ditions of  activity  [or  progress]  evidently  require  makes  con- 
tinuity as  that  alone  in  which  the  two  can  be  at  one  with  each 
other  a  necessity.  Continuity  is  only  a  purely  physical  con- 
ception of  relationship."     Pp.  29-30. 


144  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

conflict  with  self  or  nature,  rising  formalism, 
disintegration  at  home,  and  abroad  hostile 
relations  which  threaten  invasion  if  not  over- 
throw; but  there  are  important  accompani- 
ments of  these  general  changes  which  should 
have  careful  consideration. 

Social  individuation,  very  much  like  personal 
individuation,  induces  an  organic  localization 
of  functions.  It  brings  a  more  or  less  definite, 
an  ever  more  definite  division  of  society  into 
distinct  classes,  and  a  more  or  less  definite,  an 
ever  more  definite  localization  of  these  classes 
in  the  recognized  territory.  Of  course  the 
territorial  separation  of  a  society  is  evidence  of 
an  organically  differentiating  and  localizing 
process  in  the  life  of  nature  as  the  including 
whole,  and  this  is  a  fact  not  to  be  lost  sight  of, 
but  for  the  present  it  is  to  be  kept  in  the  back- 
ground. For  the  present  we  are  to  narrow 
our  view  to  the  inner  change  and  condition  of 
an  individual  society.  What,  then,  a  society's 
inner  differentiation — at  once  political  and 
geographical — is  and  why  it  is  are  the  prob- 
lems confronting  us. 

But  these  problems  are  easily  solved,  for 
social  individuation,  like  personal  individua- 
tion, involves  an  intensification  of  conscious- 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    145 

ness,  a  growing  tension  in  the  expression  of 
the  organic  Hfe;  and  with  this  a  society  begins 
to  divide  the  labor  of  its  activity  and  particu- 
larly to  develop  within  itself  certain  special 
organs  or  classes,  whose  office  it  is  to  define 
the  consciousness,  and  certain  other  special 
organs  or  classes,  whose  office  it  is  to  supply 
the  more  material  needs  of  the  social  life.  In 
other  words,  thinkers  arise,  who  separate 
themselves  from  direct  contact  with  life  and 
nature,  and  servants  or — in  the  narrower  sense 
— laborers,  who  retain  a  relation  to  life  and 
nature,  but  in  such  a  lifeless  or  mechanical  or 
left-handed  way  as  to  make  them  materially 
as  well  as  formally  the  contemporaries  of  their 
leisured  ** superiors."  And  with  this  separa- 
tion of  classes  there  comes  also  the  develop- 
ment of  towns  and  cities  and  of  a  single 
metropolis  or  intellectual  and  political  centre. 
In  the  metropolis  the  social  life  grows  intense, 
keenly  self-conscious,  dramatic,  more  brilliant 
than  genuine,  while  beyond  the  city  gates,  in 
what  comes  to  be  called  almost  reproachfully 
the  "country,"  the  life  seems  even  to  be  losing 
the  consciousness  that  it  had,  becoming  dull, 
monotonous  and  quite  as  unreal  as  the  glare 
of  the  distant  city.     A  poet  might  exclaim  of 


146  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY, 

the  two:     Is  not  one  the  dull  east,  the  other 
the  glowing  west  of  a  closing  day! 

But  a  keener  consciousness  in  an  individual 
society,  as  in  an  individual  person,  signifies 
control  or — to  use  a  word  familiar  to  the  psy- 
chologists if  to  no  one  else — inhibition;  and 
control  or  inhibition  does  not  mean  cessation 
of  activity,  but  activity  for  its  own  sake  instead 
of  for  any  clearly  recognized  motive  or  relation 
beyond  itself.  Some  time  ago  we  found  activity 
for  activity's  sake,  the  turning  of  life  into  a 
cult,  a  natural  accompaniment  of  a  society's 
conflict  with  itself,  but  now  we  are  to  connect 
it  with  the  differentiation  of  society  into  classes 
both  locally  and  functionally  distinct.  In 
order  to  act  effectively  against  the  strengthen- 
ing opposition  without  a  society  must  get  itself 
together,  whatever  the  cost;  and,  as  we  know, 
the  cost  is  a  growing  self-consciousness  with 
all  its  incidents.  The  cost  is  a  consciousness 
that  is  as  dramatic — or  abstract — as  it  is  local 
and  an  overt  activity,  a  conduct  of  life,  a  labor, 
that  is  as  mechanical  as  it  is  local.  Only  with 
this  cost  can  the  control,  necessary  to  greater 
effectiveness,  be  secured.  But  why  call  it 
cost.-*  Because  it  shows  society  living  its  own 
death,  becoming  alienated  from  itself. 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    147 

Consciousness,  then,  signifies  control;  it 
signifies  a  control  which  on  one  side,  that  of 
the  self-conscious,  dramatic  reproduction  of 
life,  is  to  be  seen  geographically  in  the  city 
and  politically  in  the  leisured  class,  and  on  the 
other  side,  that  of  the  mechanical  conduct  of 
life,  geographically  in  the  country  and  politi- 
cally in  the  serving  or  laboring  class.* 

In  a  city,  as  it  grows,  we  see  a  people  com- 
ing to  live  its  life  as  if  to  itself.  The  city,  so 
wonderfully  mobile,  shows  us  miles  of  farm- 
land and  years  of  experience  focussed  in  a 
single  square.  It  is  the  very  much  contracted 
life,  and  its  institutions  are  the  very  much  con- 
tracted symbol  of  the  country.  The  old  rela- 
tions of  course  persist,  the  old  interests  and 
the   old   needs,     but  wonderfully    intensified. 

*  Of  much  that  has  been  said  and  is  yet  to  be  said  in  this 
chapter,  I  have  already  given  a  rough  outline  {^Dynamic  Ideal- 
ism^ pp.  190  sq.),  and  except  for  occasional  verbal  changes  I 
may  at  times  even  quote  myself  literally  here  without  the 
encumbrance  of  quotation  marks.  At  the  time  of  the  earlier 
statement  I  was  chiefly  interested  in  using  the  process  of 
social  change  as  an  illustration  of  the  general  process  of 
thought.  The  process  of  thought  manifests  a  similar  func- 
tional and  spatial  differentiation.  In  company  with  the  defini- 
tion of  consciousness,  thought-organs  are  developed  that  are 
distinct  from  the  organs  of  conduct,  and  also  in  company  with 
the  developed  expression  of  thought  in  language  there  appears 
the  distinction  between  right-handedness — or  conscious  activ- 
ity— and  lef t-handedness — or  mechanical  activity.  The  visible 
institutions  of  a  society  are  the  language  in  which  its  thought 
is  expressed. 


148  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

The  great  department  store,  for  example,  is 
the  country  store  over  again,  but  on  a  much 
grander  scale;  and  the  streets  have  the  same 
functions  as  the  country  roads,  but  driver  and 
wayfarer  cannot  be  too  alert.  Yes,  the  city 
repeats  or  dramatically  rehearses  the  country 
life,  and  intensifies  it,  turning  simplicity  into 
complexity,  naivete  into  self-consciousness  and 
sophistication.  But,  more  than  this,  the  rise 
of  the  city,  with  its  congested  population  and 
all,  shows  the  country  life  suffering  decHne,  for 
the  people  as  a  whole  are  living  to  themselves, 
as  if  the  activity  were  for  its  own  sake,  not  to 
nature.  Consider  how  the  rural  civilization 
decays.  The  country  folk  lose  their  culture 
and  change  to  mere  drudges,  little  better  than 
day-laborers,  living  with  nature  perhaps,  but 
not  to  her;  living — as  said  before — only  left- 
handedly.  Inactivity  sets  in  among  them. 
Their  agriculture  passes  into  the  hands  of  large 
owners  and  becomes — so  far  as  they  are  con- 
cerned— a  purely  mechanical  process.  Possibly 
it  is  taken  from  them  altogether  by  being 
transferred  to  unsettled  territory,  or  by  being 
assumed  by  the  cheaper  labor  of  invaders. 
And  the  city's  great  department  store  not  only 
reproduces  the  country  store,  but  also  takes 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    149 

away  its  business  by  conducting  an  ever- 
increasing  out-of-town  trade.  The  city,  too, 
goes  to  the  theatre  and  the  ball,  while  the 
deserted  folk  on  the  neglected  farms  pine  for 
the  days  when  life  was  so  much  more  worth 
while,  even  resenting  the  means  of  communi- 
cation and  transportation  that  have  made  the 
changes  possible.  In  short,  then,  the  country 
dies  as  the  city  lives;  and  it  dies,  just  because 
■^ — as  was  said — in  the  city  a  people  is  living  its 
old  Hfe  to  itself,  the  more  positive  expression 
of  it  having  been  put  in  abeyance.  Or,  again, 
with  its  absorbing  interest  in  control,  in  dis- 
tribution and  communication  and  manufacture, 
rather  than  in  direct  production,  the  city  mani- 
fests just  such  a  withdrawal  from  nature — 
from  the  sphere  of  original  expression — as  is 
implied  always  in  the  rise  of  self-consciousness; 
and  the  country — that  is  perhaps  more  beauti- 
ful or  more  picturesque  by  reason  of  the  decay 
— in  its  dull  existence  shows  the  contemporary 
effect  on  the  conduct  of  life. 

But  somebody  is  impatient  to  accuse  me  of 
forgetting  myself.  In  what  purports  to  be  an 
account  of  a  much  earlier  time  in  the  life  of 
human  society  I  am  allowing  myself  the  most 
modern  terms,  terms  that  are  so  modern  as 


150  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

possibly  to  seem  even  vulgarly  offensive  to 
those  who  have  any  proper  historical  sense.  I 
am  like  the  great  preacher  who  thrilled  his 
audience  with  the  roar  of  cannon  and  the  glit- 
ter of  bayonets  in  one  of  the  long-ago  battles 
between  Romans  and  Parthians.  Well,  I  con- 
fess my  forgetfulness;  but  what  historian,  who 
ever  gets  free  from  mere  antiquarism,  can  help 
forgetting?  A  modern  realism  surely  does  no 
greater  violence  to  history  than  antiquarism. 
Terms  indeed  may  change  in  the  course  of 
time,  but  the  relations  of  life  do  not  change. 
Besides,  have  we  not  found  that  the  contem- 
porary past  was  the  only  past  that  we  could 
recognize.-*  Whatever  we  may  call  them,  the 
things  that  are  were  and  the  things  that  were 
are.  A  physical  scientist  sees  the  same  law, 
the  same  force,  in  both  the  explosion  of  gun- 
powder and  the  blows  and  movements  of  bat- 
tle-axes and  javelins,  and  an  economist  the 
same  social  life  in  both  the  marts  of  ancient 
cities  and  the  great  department  stores  of  today. 
So  my  forgetting  is  also  remembering. 

And,  turning  now  to  the  political  in  distinc- 
tion from  the  geograpical  differentiation  of  an 
individual  or  self-conscious  society,  we  shall 
get  still  more  history  of  the  sort  that  finds  the 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    151 

past  also  present.  Thus,  the  control  or  inhibi- 
tion that  the  consciousness  brings  shows  itself 
also  in  the  so-called  supremacy  of  the  leisured 
class.  The  thinkers  rule;  the  laborers  obey. 
There  is,  too,  a  third  class,  as  if  to  mediate 
between  these  two  extremes,  that  is  in  general 
the  official  class.  The  thinkers  define  in  the 
social  consciousness  the  law  of  the  social  life; 
the  workers  preserve  the  life  itself  while  the 
definition  is  in  process;  the  officials  execute 
the  law  as  it  is  promulgated;  and  all  three  are 
at  once  functionally  distinguishable  but  mate- 
rially contemporary.  Simply  a  society  become 
self-conscious  and  awakened  to  the  pressing 
need  of  control  can  do  without  no  one  of 
them. 

It  is  often  said  that  a  thinking  or  intellectual 
class  arises  in  society  whenever  prosperity  has 
brought  leisure,  and  this  statement  is  true 
enough  when  it  is  properly  understood.  One 
needs  first  to  recognize  that  leisure  in  one 
direction  always  brings  severe  responsibility  in 
another,  that  there  may  be,  nay  must  be  as 
much  leisure  in  labor  as  in  thought,  and  sec- 
ondly to  comprehend  fully  what  the  dependence 
of  a  leisured  thinking  class  on  a  serving  labor- 
ing class  really  is.     The  thought-life,  however 


152  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

abstract  its  thinking  may  become,  is  based 
psychologically  as  well  as  sociologically  on 
what  in  general  we  are  calling  labor.  Is  it 
not  an  incident  of  control?  And  is  control  less 
easy  than  expression?  Thinker  and  laborer 
are  born  of  the  same  social  life,  and  what  the 
former  controls  in  spite  of  the  tendency  of  his 
nature  the  latter  expresses  without  the  need  of 
thought.  Which,  then,  has  the  most  leisure, 
the  inactive  thinker  or  the  unthinking  laborer, 
it  would  indeed  be  hard  to  say.  But,  further- 
more, in  regard  to  the  relation  of  the  two,  the 
relegation  of  the  labor  of  a  society  to  slaves  or 
servants  or  to  men  of  material  affairs  generally, 
which  is  so  necessary  to  the  rise  of  an  intellec- 
tual class,  never  takes  place  and  never  can 
take  place  unless  all  have  the  acquired  power 
to  do  what  is  relegated  to  the  few.  Are  not 
all,  as  was  said,  sprung  from  the  same  life? 
Thinkers  and  laborers  alike  must  have  a  devel- 
oped capacity,  a  freedom,  which  in  terms  of 
powers  and  impulses  is  the  same,  even  if  it 
come  to  overt  expression  only  among  the  lat- 
ter; and  in  this  freedom,  in  this  acquired 
capacity,  although  inert  or  only  potential  in 
the  life  of  those  that  think,  lies  the  real  basis 
of  the  intellectual  life.     Thus,  to  repeat  sum- 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    153 

marily,  the  subjective  capacity  to  do  the  work 
of  society  and  the  relegation  of  the  work  itself 
to  a  special  class  are  equally  necessary  to  the 
rise  of  thinkers,  the  former  being  a  psychologi- 
cal and  the  latter  a  sociological  condition. 
There  were  no  thought,  no  science,  possible  in 
a  social  life  without  labor,  and  the  thinker  as 
well  as  the  laborer  must  have  the  power,  the 
adapted  structure  that  the  labor  requires. 
How  else  could  thought  define  to  society  the 
law  of  its  activity?  Why,  even  the  circus- 
performer,  what  with  his  great  skill  in  express- 
ing the  relations  of  space,  is  one  of  a  whole 
army  of  servants  of  the  abstract  sciences  of 
space  and  motion;  but  no  man  on  earth  could 
be  an  abstract  mathematician  who  was  not 
structurally  adapted  to  move  in  space  as  freely 
as  the  most  agile  gymnast.  This  is  a  fanciful, 
if  not  an  absurd  illustration;  but  I  think  it 
embodies  a  principle.  In  the  gymnast,  as  in 
all  cases  of  service,  ■  we  see  a  certain  activity 
taken  out  of  real  life  and  made  a  cult,  and  this 
abstraction  is  only  as  it  were  the  open  practice 
of  that  which  an  abstract  science  defines. 
Moreover,  the  science  and  the  practice,  which 
are  equally  abstract,  must  be  remembered  as 
the   two   intimately  related   incidents  of  the 


154  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

control  that  a  self-conscious  society  finds 
necessary;  and  while  they  are  both  of  them 
signs  that  society  is  being  alienated  from  itself, 
they  are  signs  also,  because  of  their  intimate 
relation,  that  alienation  is  not  all  that  is  going 
on.  Psychologically  or  sociologically,  the  time 
can  not  but  come  when  labor  and  thought  will 
return  to  each  other.  Thus,  whenever  science 
is  afield,  it  is  well  to  look  for  a  revolution. 
But  this  is  anticipating, 

A  society's  thought  is  long  in  developing  and 
we  need  to  follow  the  process  of  the  develop- 
ment in  its  several  moments  before  we  can 
adequately  comprehend  how  it  must  culminate 
in  a  revolution.  That  alienation  is  a  forerun- 
ner of  revolution  is  quite  evident,  but  the 
successive  details  of  the  process  are  important, 
although  their  differences  may  prove  to  be  only 
in  degree.  Accordingly,  with  reference  par- 
ticularly to  the  three  social  classes,  already 
named,  the  thinkers,  the  officials,  and  the 
laborers,  I  have  found  it  convenient  to  recog- 
nize five  moments  in  the  alienating  process, 
these  moments,  namely:  (i)  the  moment  of 
consciously  asserted  patriotism;  (2)  the  mo- 
ment of  aesthethic  self-appreciation;  (3)  the 
moment  of  the  cosmopolitan  spirit;    (4)  the 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    155 

moment  of  assumed  and  cultivated  naturalism, 
and  (5)  the  moment  of  spiritual  surrender  and 
resignation.  Thus,  here  they  are  in  a  table, 
with  the  contemporary  class  changes: 


FIVE  MOMENTS  IN  A  SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF. 

Sg 

Historical 

Thinkers. 

Officials. 

Laborers. 

Illustra- 

tion. 

OS 

I 

Law-makers. 

Public     guar- 
dians or  pat- 
riots. 

Slaves. 

Greece   before 
Pericles'  time, 

2 

Artists. 

Conscious  and 
critical    citi- 
zens. 

Paid  servants. 

The   age    of 
Pericles. 

3 

Scientists. 

Politicians. 

Artisans. 

The     period 
just  before 

Socrates. 

4 

Philosophers. 

Fatalists      or 

Revolution- 

The Socratic 

time-servers. 

ists. 

Period. 

5 

Religious  lead- 

Followers    or 

Hirelings. 

Greece  a  Chris 

er   or    mon- 

disciples. 

tian-Roman 

arch. 

province. 

A  mere  glance  at  this  table  shows  a  progres- 
sive increase  in  the  degree  of  the  alienation  of 
the  society  as  a  whole  from  itself,  from  its 
institutions  and  traditions,  or — otherwise  put 
— a  progressive  increase  in  the  degree  of  the 
independence  or  individual  freedom  of  the 
members  of  society.  The  very  slaves  are  lib- 
erated, but  only  as  their  superiors,  the  thinkers 
and  the  officials,  lose  their  own  loyalty  to  the 
existing  order  of  things.  In  the  fourth  column 
of  the  table  I  have  introduced  a  set  of  illustra- 
tions from  the  past  which  are  somewhat  dan- 


156  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

gerous,  but  if  used  cautiously  may  be  helpful. 
Also  it  is  to  be  recognized  that  the  names 
selected  for  the  different  classes  in  the  different 
moments  had  to  be  selected  somewhat  arbi- 
trarily. Naming  the  moments  of  a  continuous 
process  is  exactly  like  naming  the  indistin- 
guishable parts  of  the  spectrum.  The  unity 
of  the  table,  however,  will  help  to  interpret 
the  parts  of  it.  But  let  us  follow  the  different 
moments  in  detail. 

In  general  thought  controls  activity  in  order 
to  unify  or  organize  it,  and  in  society's  unifica- 
tion or  organization  of  its  life  the  first  thinkers 
to  arise  are  naturally  law-makers,  because  law 
is  a  means  to  the  mere  control  rather  than  to 
the  positive  interpretation  of  what  is  doing. 
Mere  control,  through  legal  * '  thou  shalts ' '  and 
*  *  thou  shalt  nots, "  is  an  antecedent  condition 
of  interpretation,  or  rather  of  clearer  interpre- 
tation, since  the  control  itself,  when  possible, 
is  evidence  of  a  more  or  less  indefinite  sense  of 
what  the  interpretation  is  going  to  be.  In 
individual  experience,  when  conflict  and  need 
of  adjustment  come,  we  at  first  treat  ourselves 
legally — do  we  not.-* — issuing  commands  to 
ourselves  to  do  or  not  to  do  this  or  that  which 
in  themselves  are  not  interpretations  of  what 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    157 

we  are  doing  but  both  imply  interpretation 
and  lead  to  more  definite  interpretation  of 
what  our  life  is  and  so  of  what  ought  to  be  its 
expression.  Law-makers,  then,  being  the 
first  thinkers,  slaves  as  those  who  in  their 
obedience  are  as  unreasoning  as  the  law  that 
controls  them  are  the  first  laborers,  and  pubHc 
guardians  or  patriots,  by  whom  the  law  is  con- 
fused with  the  state  or  who  are  almost  blind 
in  their  loyalty  to  the  law  as  well  as  in  their 
treatment  of  the  slaves,  are  the  first  officials. 
And  after  law,  art.  Both  law  and  art  are 
material  or  sensuous  in  their  terms  and  in  their 
standpoint,  but  law  interprets  and  controls  the 
impulses  of  life  only  implicitly,  or  say  nega- 
tively or  indirectly,  while  art  interprets  and 
controls  them  directly  and  positively.  Art 
does  not  say :  *  •  Thou  shalt ' '  and  '  •  Thou  shalt 
not,"  but  simply  reveals  unity  or  harmony  in 
the  sphere  of  the  expression  of  the  different 
acts  to  which  man  is  impelled,  and  this  unity 
or  harmony  exercises  control.  The  control, 
however,  is  no  longer  arbitrary  or  irrational, 
being  as  much  a  matter  of  motive  as  of  com- 
mand, of  will  as  of  compulsion,  and  as  if  in 
recognition  of  this  change,  the  laborers  in 
society  become   paid  servants,  servants  who 


158  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

have  a  conscious  and  voluntary  share  in  the 
unity  of  the  social  life,  and  the  officials  become 
conscious  citizens  in  the  sense  of  observers  and 
critics  of  what  is  doing  rather  than  mere 
unreasoning  champions  of  it.  Every  part  of 
society  has  to  share  in  the  change;  else  the 
artist's  consciousness  v^ould  be  in  the  air  and 
he  would  have  no  public. 

That  art  is  more  alienating,  or  more  liber- 
ating, than  law  hardly  needs  to  be  said.  Art 
transfers  the  control  of  life  from  the  human  to 
the  natural  and  so  subordinates  human  law  to 
natural  law,  or — as  the  same  thing — finds  a 
principle  of  control  in  human  experience  as 
such.  Human  experience  includes  nature  as 
well  as  man,  and  when  treated  as  the  source 
of  that  which  controls  man  it  tends  to  free  him 
from  the  visible  traditions  and  institutions  of 
the  society  in  which  he  has  been  living. 

The  rise  of  art  in  Greece  illustrates  this,  and 
the  rise  of  art  at  the  close  of  the  *  *  dark  ages ' 
— accompanied  as  it  was  by  the  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith,  that  is  only  an  appeal  to 
human  experience — also  illustrates  it;  but  here 
we  shall  speak  only  of  the  first.  In  Greek  art, 
which  came  as  a  sort  of  celebration  of  Greek 
patriotism  and  achievement,  we  see  a  national 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    159 

life,  its  religion,  its  politics,  and  its  morals, 
put  upon  the  stage  or  in  general  held  up  for 
rational  observation — and  for  criticism,  since 
observation  involves  criticism, 

*  *  In  the  art  and  literature  of  Greece, "  if  I 
may  quote  myself,"^  * '  it  is  wrong  to  see  a  people 
only  paying  tribute  to  its  past.  Art  always 
defines  the  past,  and  definition  of  the  past  sets 

the  future  free In  Greek  art 

.  '.  .  there  was  more  than  a  golden  age, 
there  was  the  closing  in  of  a  people's  conflict. 
The  expression  of  experience  in  works  of  art 
did  for  a  time  make  the  pulse  beat  faster  with 
pleasure  and  sense  of  worth  and  power;  but  in 
the  end  the  effect  of  putting  the  time-honored 
ways  and  long-cherished  ideals  and  noble  deeds 

and  heroes  upon  the  stage was 

to  show  where  the  battle  was  yet  to  be  fought, 
in  that  it  heralded  an  age  of  rationalism  as 
successor  to  morality  and  piety  and  patriotism. 
Staging  life,  however  reverently  at  first,  had  to 
lead  in  time  to  moral  laxity,  impiety,  corrup- 
tion in  political  life,  and  general  social  disin- 
tegration. It  robbed  life  of  all  that  had  given 
it  worth  and  coherence  and  power  to  satisfy 
the  moral  and  religious  nature;  it  made  the 

*  Citizenship  and  Salvation,     pp.  14-15. 


l6o  PHIL  O  SO  PHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

traditional  meaning  of  life  external;  it  turned 
life  into  a  form  or  convention  instead  of  a  con- 
tent with  any  substantial  spiritual  worth;  into 

a  something  merely  to  be  used 

rather  than  what  it  had  been — an  inner 
strength  and  support.  In  the  Greek  plays 
[and  they  show  the  tendency  in  all  art]  natural 
law  .  .  .  came  to  succeed  the  gods  [and 
also  men]  in  the  control  of  human  life." 

In  short  art  alienates.  In  it,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  life  out  of  which  it  springs, 
there  is  a  motive  to  treachery.  The  control 
that  it  induces  is  lawlessness  also,  but  only 
because  natural  law  must  always  transgress  the 
laws  of  men. 

But  after  art,  science.  Science  is  art  at  its 
limit,  very  much  as  art  might  be  styled  legis- 
lation at  its  limit.  Science  sees  only  the 
natural,  forgetting  the  human  in  so  far  as  this 
is  anything  distinct;  and,  as  a  consequence, 
art's  sensuously  expressed  ideal  becomes  only 
an  idea  or  a  natural  mechanical  law,  the  unity 
or  harmony  of  art  having  become  freed  from 
any  sensuous  relation  to  restrained  impulses  or 
stimulating  objects.  The  symbol  of  a  scien- 
tific idea  is  a  mere  symbol,  valueless  in  itself, 
being   as   indifferent   to   the   purely  iensuous 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    i6i 

consciousness  as  the  external  nature  whose  law 
it  symbolizes;  and  the  idea  itself  is  an  abstract 
idea,  a  concept.  The  difference  in  general 
between  art  and  science  is  that  between  a  real 
or  living  metaphor  and  a  dead  metaphor. 
Thus,  science  succeeds  art  in  the  life  of  a  peo- 
ple so  soon  as  the  environment,  which  com- 
prises the  numerous  institutions  and  customs 
of  the  social  life,  is  turned  to  a  dead  metaphor, 
the  life  itself  becoming  formal  or  conventional. 
Indeed  it  might  be  said — in  recognition  of  the 
process  by  which  metaphors  die — that  famili- 
arity breeds  the  contempt  which  science  always 
has  for  art.  And  so,  contemporary  with  scien- 
tists, as  the  representatives  of  the  other  social 
classes,  are  politicians,  for  whom  the  social 
life  is  a  carefully,  a  mechanically  measured 
opportunity  instead  of  a  devotion,  cosmopoli- 
tanism having  succeeded  patriotism  and 
aesthetic  satisfaction,  and  artisans,  who  also 
serve  a  trade  instead  of  a  master.  Perhaps 
cosmopolitanism — it  will  be  remembered  that 
we  characterized  this  third  moment  as  that  of 
the  cosmopolitan  spirit — is  not  the  right  word 
for  this  place,  but  it  can  err  only  in  being  per- 
haps a  shade  too  explicit  or  too  advanced,  for 
in  the  naturally  laissez-faire  attitude  of  science 


l62  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

and  the  disloyal  selfishness  of  the  politician 
and  the  dependence  of  the  artisan  on  his  tools, 
on  his  application  of  nature's  resources,  the 
spirit  of  cosmopolitanism  is  certainly  more 
than  merely  imphcit. 

Succeeding  the  scientist  is  the  philosopher; 
and  with  the  philosopher  come  the  time-server 
or  fatalist  and  the  revolutionist.  These  terms 
have  been  perhaps  the  hardest  of  all  to  select, 
but  each  one  of  them  is  intended  to  indicate 
the  final  assertion  of  independence  of  tradi- 
tions, institutions,  and  long-cherished  ideals. 
Science,  although  not  materially  loyal  to  the 
existing  order,  is  still  formally  so,  and  the  pol- 
itician and  artisan  are  naturally  conservative 
in  the  same  way,  but  the  philosopher  and  his 
contemporaries  lose  even  the  form  of  loyalty 
to  what  is.  The  fatalist  does  but  execute  the 
law  that  the  philosopher  makes  and  the  revo- 
lutionist, as  enemy  abroad  or  traitor  at  home, 
does  but  obediently  practice  it.  In  them  all 
the  society  to  which  they  belong  has  brought 
itself  to  the  level  of  the  life  without.  Through 
conquest,  perhaps — as  with  the  imperialist 
Alexander  the  Great — or  finally  through  sub- 
mission— as  when  Greece   became  a  Roman 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    163 

province — the  leveling,  which  is  identical  with 
alienation,  fulfills  itself. 

And  conquest  or  submission,  or  let  us  say 
imperialism,  in  which  conquest  and  submission 
are  identical,  changes  philosophy  into  religion, 
thought  into  faith,  the  naive  individual  that  had 
been,  at  the  beginning,  into  the  soldier  as  the 
typical  character  of  the  second  stage  of  a  soci- 
ety's activity.     But  why } 

Just  because  the  alienation  is  so  complete. 
The  philosopher's  thinking  ceases  to  be  his 
thinking,  or  any  body's  thinking,  almost  as 
soon  as  it  has  found  expression.  The  philoso- 
pher's thought  is  nature's  thought ;  his  reason 
is  a  world-reason.  For  him,  even  while  he 
speaks,  nature  ceases  to  be  even  formally  ex- 
ternal to  man,  becoming  all-inclusive,  all-ab- 
sorbing. To  him  man  and  nature,  the  subjective 
and  the  objective,  the  inner  and  the  outer,  the 
life  at  home  and  the  life  abroad,  neighbor  and 
foreigner  are  one.  Through  him  the  spirit  of 
the  age,  both  as  a  thought  and  as  a  life,  is  set 
free,  or  rather  through  him  thought  and  life  are 
made  one.  But  the  unity  of  thought  and  life, 
upon  which  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit  of  the 
Age  really  depends,  is  religion;  it  is  religion  in 
the  sense  that  identifies  faith  and  works. 


l64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY, 

Science,  we  saw,  was  art  at  its  limit,  and  in 
like  manner  philosophy  is  science  at  its  limit. 
As  was  said,  even  the  only  formal  separation 
of  subject  and  object,  upon  which  science  de- 
pends, disappears  in  the  thinking  of  philosophy, 
so  that — and  this  involves  the  truth  of  all  lim- 
its, does  it  not? — philosophy,  although  the  limit 
of  science,  is  itself  not  scientific.  The  limit 
outgrows  its  antecedents.  And  with  the  out- 
growth expression  of  the  thought  of  a  society  is 
no  longer  even  in  lifeless  institutions,  in  envi- 
ronment as  a  dead  metaphor,  in  abstract  formu- 
lae, but  is  embodied  in  the  life  of  a  man  who 
is  the  incarnation  of  the  thought  that  had  begun 
in  society  so  long  ago  and  that  is  at  last  set  free 
and  who  comes  to  a  people  which  is  still  blinded 
by  its  own  dead  traditions  as  the  messenger  of 
another  world,  although  he  is  but  the  revealed 
motive  of  their  own  history.  So,  again,  phi- 
losophy is  a  forerunner  of  religion;  a  forerunner 
of  the  return  of  complexity  into  simplicity,  of 
the  return  of  man  to  nature,  of  the  fall  of  cities 
and  the  death  of  abstract  thinkers.  Is  not 
philosophy  agnosticism  or  skepticism,  and  being 
this  can  its  conclusion  be  anything  but  faith 
and  simplicity  t  When  man  is  at  one  with 
nature  must  not  the  word  become  incarnate } 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    165 

But  what  have  conquest  and  submission  to 
do  with  all  this?  What  has  imperialism,  in 
which  conquest  and  submission  were  but  just 
now  said  to  be  identical,  to  do  with  all  this? 
Why,  the  motive  to  conquest  shows  the  life 
without  conquering  the  inner,  does  it  not?  It 
shows  the  beginning  of  a  surrender  of  an  iso- 
lated individuality.  Alexander,  already  men- 
tioned in  illustration,  did  indeed  carry  Greek 
civilization  to  the  barbarians,  but  not  less  did 
he  alienate  the  Greeks  from  themselves  and 
prepare  the  downfall  of  their  civilization,  of 
their  art  and  science  and  religion.  After  Alex- 
ander the  Greek  became  a  barbarian,  or  Greek 
and  barbarian,  as  if  man  and  nature  became 
one  in  imperial  Rome.  And  the  power  of 
Rome — had  it  a  worldly  or  a  spiritual  sanction? 
It  had  both  in  one.  The  monarch  was  also 
the  God,  the  Incarnate  Spirit  of  another  world, 
and  his  subjects,  at  once  soldiers  and  disciples. 
So,  then,  is  the  alienation  of  a  society  from 
itself  fulfilled  in  imperialism,  the  establishing 
principle  of  which,  I  should  say,  is  this,  that 
belief  in  another  world  as  supernatural,  by 
being  a  corrective  of  a  people's  isolation  or 
partiality,  is  liberation  of  the  natural   in   this. 


l66  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

Certainly  the  physical,  the  natural,  is  never  so 
supreme  as  when  the  supernatural  is  recognized. 

Here,  however,  we  are  in  danger  of  encroach- 
ing upon  the  concerns  of  the  next  chapter, 
while  there  still  remains  something  to  be  said 
upon  what  is  at  present  before  us.  The  pro- 
cess that  we  have  been  examining,  in  which  a 
society  is  seen  to  become  alienated  from  itself, 
was  said  at  the  very  beginning  of  our  examina- 
tion to  be  a  measure  of  defence.  To  meet  a 
recognized  danger  from  without  society  devel- 
ops thinkers  and  founds  cities,  thereby  focusing 
and  intensifying  its  own  individuality.  But  is 
this  sort  of  defence  effective?  Historically,  yes. 
It  made  Thermopylae  and  Marathon,  Salamis 
and  Plataea,  possible;  and  it  finally  brought 
the  Greek  face  to  face  with  himself.  We  need, 
in  a  word,  to  remember  that  the  defence,  al- 
though at  first  sight  of  civilized  man  against 
barbarian,  was — and  always  is — in  reality  of 
human  nature  against  man  or  even  of  nature 
in  general  against  herself  and  that  the  final 
victory  comes  only  when  a  people  can  say  with 
Socrates,  who  saw  so  deeply  into  the  truth  of 
alienation;    ''  To  die  is  gain. ' ' 

And,  finally,  in  the  succession  of  social  classes 
we  must  not  for  a  moment  imagine  that  the  old 


SOCIETY'S  ALIENATION  FROM  ITSELF.    167 

classes  disappear  as  the  new  arise,  although  in 
a  qualified  sense  it  is  true  that  they  do.  The 
old  thinkers,  for  example,  always  persist,  but 
in  subjection  to  the  new.  When  art  has  suc- 
ceeded law,  law  itself  appeals  from  the  human 
to  the  natural,  losing  its  purely  mandatory 
character,  and  when  science  has  succeeded  art, 
art  becomes  formal  and  mechanical,  and  phi- 
losophy turns  mystical  with  the  advent  of 
religion,  and  corresponding  changes  occur  in 
the  relations  of  the  classes  contemporary  with 
the  thinkers.  Cities,  moreover,  in  their  devel- 
opment so  intimately  related  to  the  changes  in 
the  social  classes,  really  include  the  country. 
Has  not  somebody  compared  a  city  with  a 
great  octopus?  But  here  a  reminiscence  or 
two:  History  ever  transcends  both  its  stages 
and  its  localities  by  persistently  contemporizing 
the  former  and  universalizing  the  latter;  and: 
Progress  is  the  contemporizing  law  of  the  past, 
whether  as  thought  or  as  environment,  becom- 
ing the  motive,  which  is  only  the  contempor- 
ized future,  of  the  all-inclusive  present. 


CHAPTER   XL 

THE    PROCESS    OF    SOCIETY'S    RESTORATION    TO 
ITSELF. 

WHAT  is  noty  is,  was  the  highly  technical 
formula  that  we  ventured  to  give  for  the 
second  stage  of  a  society's  progress  and  it  was 
the  formula  of  the  very  imperialism  or  super- 
naturalism  or  absolutism  into  which  we  have 
just  seen  a  society  to  pass  upon  the  completion 
of  its  alienation  from  itself.  The  belief,  how- 
ever, in  another  world,  in  a  supernatural  world, 
appeared  as  a  corrective  of  partiality  of  life  in 
the  world  that  is,  for  it  only  liberates  a  freer,  a 
more  general  and  more  fundamental  expression 
of  the  natural.  So,  at  the  very  moment  of 
complete  alienation  restoration  is  assured. 
Liberation  of  the  natural  can  not  but  restore 
an  alienated  society  to  itself. 

But  let  us  look  even  once  more  to  the  state 
in  which  a  society  finds  itself  at  the  moment 
of  its  extreme  alienation.  Here  it  is,  although 
somewhat  differently  put.  The  end  of  life  is 
wholly  lapart   from  the  means.     In  terms  of 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     169 

popular  usage,  the  means  is  physical,  the  end 
spiritual.  Living  creatures  being  responsible 
to  the  other  world  instead  of  to  this  and  so  being 
the  mere  medium  of  a  physical  process,  are 
become  the  tools  or  in  their  social  unity  the 
tool  of  whoever  among  them  has  gained  the 
greatest  physical  power.  They  are  the  means 
or  the  source  of  the  power,  but  their  spiritual 
abstraction,  implying  as  it  does  a  perfect  phys- 
ical or  mechanical  differentiation  among  them, 
sanctions  an  individual  leadership.  The  leader 
as  spiritually  the  universal  individual  is  but  the 
visible  representative  of  all,  and  as  physically 
the  leader  only  takes  his  peculiar  place  in  the 
differentiated  mechanical  whole.  Society,  in 
short,  is  an  army  that  has  life  in  the  other 
world,  not  indeed  for  its  motive,  since  then  its 
individual  members  would  be  suicides  instead 
of  soldiers^  but  for  its  fearlessly  recognized 
goal.  The  army,  however,  is  not  an  army  until 
it  actually  moves,  motion  very  plainly  being 
necessary  to  complete  alienation,  but  also — and 
here  we  are  to  see  how  unreal  the  second  stage, 
the  stage  of  absolute  alienation,  is — motion, 
which  is  identical  with  what  was  above  referred 
to  as  liberation  of  the  natural,  not  brings  but 
is  the  restoration  of  society  to  itself. 


1 70  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  V. 

The  implications,  then,  of  the  motion  or 
activity  of  an  army  or  social  mechanism,  of 
society,  as  it  were,  in  another  world  and  so 
under  a  monarchical  military  despotism,  say — 
for  example — of  imperial  Rome,  are  the  spe- 
cial objects  of  our  present  interest.  What  is 
the  effect  of  the  activity  upon  itself?  Upon 
the  leader  and  the  subjects?  Upon  the  social 
life  and  all  its  manifold  relations?  What 
exactly  is  the  nature  of  the  restoration  which 
the  activity  tsf 

Briefly,  summarily,  the  effect  upon  itself  of 
the  activity  or  movement  of  a  social  mech- 
anism is  not  only  to  reveal  to  consciousness 
but  also  to  idealize  or  glorify  its  conditions.  It 
is  a  very  general  truth — is  it  not.? — that  activity 
always  glorifies  whatever  has  made  it  possible. 
Nothing  can  be  so  real  as  to  be  liberative 
without  also  being  ideal.  But  just  what  are 
the  liberative  conditions  of  a  social  mechan- 
ism? Of  course  they  are  without  number,  but 
all  of  them  are  reducible  at  least  to  two, 
namely,  to  differentiation  of  all  the  parts  as 
the  first  and  to  a  unifying  relationship  as  the 
second;  and  in  the  motion  which  they  condi- 
tion or  make  possible  even  these  two  are,  so  to 
speak,  brought  into  each  other  or  fulfilled  in 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF,     171 

each  other.  The  differentiation  proves  to  be 
identical  with  organization;  the  unity  and  the 
differences  are  intrinsic  to  each  other.  This, 
however,  signifies  that  the  spiritual  as  the  one 
or  the  universal  and  the  physical  as  the  many, 
the  different  or  the  particular,  are  brought 
together,  that  the  supernatural  is  brought 
down  to  the  natural  or  the  natural  raised  to 
the  supernatural.  In  a  word,  politically — as 
well  as  psychologically — the  free  movement  of  a 
mechanism  is  ipso  facto  realization  of  an 
organism,  since  the  organic  is  just  that  in 
which  unity  and  difference  are  at  once  identi- 
fied and  idealized,  or  in  which  the  otherness  of 
the  supernatural  is  naturalized,  and  this  in 
turn  is  only  to  say  abstractly  what  in  the  con- 
crete we  know  as  the  natural  evolution  of 
imperialism  into  internationalism,  of  monarchy 
into  democracy,  or  of  militarism  into  indus- 
trialism. Only  let  an  army  begin  to  move 
and  each  dying  part,  through  its  share  in  the 
movement  of  the  whole,  discovers  in  its  own 
peculiar  individuality  a  worth  that  is  commen- 
surate with  that  of  the  whole;  and  such  a 
discovery  means,  as  said,  internationalism  and 
democracy  and  industrialism. 

Hence,    in    history,    the   very   moment    of 


172  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

Rome's  imperial  supremacy  was  the  birth  of 
modern  Christendom.  Rome's  freedom  brought 
her  fall;  not,  however,  in  the  sense  of  decom- 
position or  disintegration,  which  is  all  that 
some  historians  have  been  able  to  see,  but  in 
the  sense  of  organic  differentiation.  Rome's 
fall,  in  other  words,  was  also  her  fulfilment. 
Her  unity  persists  today,  but  transformed, 
because — as  has  been  asserted  in  effect — the 
conditions  of  its  realization  became  ideal  at  the 
very  moment  of  its  expression.  Christendom 
has  now  and  always  has  had  for  its  rock,  for  its 
foundation,  the  principle  that  the  other  world, 
instead  of  being  something  wholly  apart  from 
this,  is  only  a  truth  or  a  reality  which  under- 
lies man's  relation  to  the  world  that  is.  The 
other  world,  as  has  been  said  more  than  once, 
just  by  reason  of  its  otherness  corrects  isola- 
tion or  partiality;  it  effects  or  inculcates  a 
responsibility  to  the  whole;  and  responsibility 
to  the  whole,  implying  as  it  does  that  the 
whole  is  organically  one,  is  and  has  been  both 
the  teaching  and  the  practice  of  Christendom. 
So  the  birth  of  the  organic  in  the  mechani- 
cal is  our  general  account  of  the  transition 
from  the  second  stage  to  the  third — or  from 
imperial  Rome  to  our  own  time — and  with  this 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     173 

general  view  before  us  we  can  pass  to  a  more 
detailed  examination  of  the  process. 

Thus,  by  no  means  the  least  important  thing 
that  we  see  is  the  rise  of  a  distinction  between 
the  national — or  individualistic — and  the  impe- 
pial — or  universalistic — institutions  in  the  life 
of  society.  Thus,  state  and  church  are  differ- 
entiated; and  king  and  pope,  language  and 
Latin,  laborer  and  soldier,  production  and 
exchange,  commodity  and  medium  or  standard 
of  value,  machinery  and  nature  as  mere 
domain,  jus  civile  and  jus  gentium^  science 
and  religion;  and  so  on  indefinitely.  This 
differentiation,  moreover,  has  both  a  geograph- 
ical .and  a  political*  expression,  but  instead  of 
looking  directly  at  these  aspects  of  it  we  shall 
here  take  a  more  general  view.  First,  how- 
ever, a  caution  is  necessary.  In  each  of  the 
pairs  of  terms  enumerated  some  one  may  see 
only  a  distinction  without  a  difference  and  turn 
upon  me  with  the  very  pertinent  question: 
Which  is  national  and  which  imperial?  In 
each  case  I  meant  to  put  the  national  first,  but 
I  am  not  absolutely  sure  that  I  have  kept  the 
same  standpoint  throughout  the  enumeration, 

*In  the  narrower  sense  of  "political"  as  referring  to 
difierentiation  of  social  classes. 


174  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

and  change  of  standpoint  would  indeed  change 
the  order,  since — absolutely — each  term  in  any 
pair  is  all  that  the  other  is.  How  could  any- 
thing else  be  true,  when  the  differentiation  is 
necessarily  an  organic  one?  But  just  what  I 
mean  here,  if  it  is  not  evident  already,  will 
appear  as  we  proceed. 

The  differentiation  of  state  and  church  is 
one  of  the  most  familiar  incidents  of  the  fall  of 
Rome,  and  from  the  standpoint  of  the  church 
it  meant  two  things,  the  loss  of  the  temporal 
power  and  the  rise  of  a  spiritual — as  well  as  of 
a  temporal — apostasy.  Society  became  ever 
more  and  more  independent  of  the  church  as 
an  institution,  justification  by  faith  supplanting 
justification  by  ecclesiastical  mediation;  and, 
although  the  Roman  Church  remained  intact  it 
lost  its  hold  upon  all  in  society  except  in  general 
the  ignorant  and  unskilled  and  indeed  retained 
its  authority  over  these  only  by  adapting  itself 
to  the  new  conditions.  The  history  of  confes- 
sion and  indulgences  is  a  startling  record  of 
preservation  through  adaptation.  But  in  spite 
of  losses  and  changes  through  Protestantism 
the  Roman  Church  has  been  and  still  is  the 
visible  representative  of  an  imperial  or  inter- 
national religion.     There  may  be  the  motive  to 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     175 

unity  among  all  peoples  in  the  churches  and 
sects  of  Protestantism,  for  they  too  are  sepa- 
rated from  the  State,  being  concerned  not  with 
the  political  but  with  the  human,  but  whatever 
their  inner  spirit  they  are  still  rather  na- 
tional than  imperial,  while  Romanism  stands 
out  as  the  manifest  symbol  of  the  imperialism 
of  Christianity. 

The  differentiation  of  king  and  pope,  of 
course  involved  in  that  of  state  and  church,  is — 
or  was — plainly  in  the  interest  of  nationalism, 
or  rather,  as  indicative  of  both  the  differentia- 
tion and  organization,  of  internationalism,  the 
king  representing  the  individual  part  and  the 
pope  the  whole.  But  the  king  is  never  the 
arbitrary  ruler  that  the  Pope — or  Emperor — 
had  been.  From  the  beginning  he  is  responsi- 
ble on  the  one  hand  to  the  Pope  as  the  head  of 
the  original  whole,  and  on  the  other  hand  to 
the  life  of  his  people  as  that  upon  which  the 
individuality,  that  is  due  to  the  differentiation, 
depends.  Moreover  these  two  sources  of  the 
responsibility  are  in  reality  not  two  but  one, 
for  as  the  latter  materializes  the  other  turns 
merely  spiritual  or  formal.  Witness  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Pope  from  emperor  to  political 
figure-head,  from  worldly  to  unworldly  sover- 


176  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

eignty,  from  imperial  domain  to  virtual  impris- 
onment. But,  to  return,  the  monarch  over  the 
separated  part  of  an  original  empire  is  neces- 
sarily a  limited  or  responsible  monarch,  and 
very  early  in  the  development  of  the  European 
nations  the  kings  or  monarchs  v^ere  looked  upon 
as  bound  by  lav^s  of  nature  or  principles  of  hu- 
manity, the  Pope  being  for  a  time  the  adminis- 
trator or  executor  of  these  lav^s  or  principles 
or  being — let  us  say  v^ith  the  same  meaning — 
the  source  of  International  Law.  International 
Lavv^  is  in  itself  an  appeal  to  the  human  or  the 
natural,  as  Hugo  de  Groot  realized  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  seventeenth  century.  And  v^^hich 
of  the  two.  Pope  or  King,  is  national }  Which 
imperial  ?  Well,  in  answer  I  should  say,  what 
was  implied  of  church  and  state,  that  each  is 
invisibly  what  the  other  is  visibly.  They  are 
both  related,  mutually  determining  incidents  of 
an  international  life. 

Of  the  rise  of  national  languages  and  the 
accompanying  decline  of  the  imperial  Latin  it 
is  not  necessary  to  speak  at  length.  Of  course 
Latin  still  has  a  place,  but  only  as  a  part  of  the 
ritual  in  the  Roman  church  or  as  an  educational 
discipline  throughout  Christendom ;  and  in  either 
of  these  functions  it  shows  the  imperial  turned 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     177 

formal  in  the  interest  of  the  national  or  indi- 
vidual. And  as  for  the  national  languages  it  is 
sufficient  to  remember  that  they  are  organically 
one  language,  only  reflecting  in  their  relations 
and  interactions  the  life  of  the  nations  to  which 
they  belong.  They  have  never  been  dead  to 
each  other. 

But  the  differentiation  of  laborer  and  soldier 
is  an  incident  in  the  process  of  restoration  that 
is  of  special  importance  to  us  and  it  calls  there- 
fore for  a  most  careful  treatment.  The  limita- 
tion of  monarchy  that  rises  with  the  organic 
division  of  the  imperial  whole  is  naturally  ac- 
companied by  a  check  upon  militarism;  for, 
should  the  old  militarism  persist,  the  division 
could  not  be  real,  the  assertion  of  national  and 
personal  individuality  could  be  only  imaginary. 
In  fact,  no  separate  part  can  even  will  a  return 
to  the  career  or  the  standpoint  of  the  whole, 
since  to  will  the  repetition  is  to  will  its  own 
destruction.  Simply,  the  original  expression 
changes  the  meaning  and  will  is  always  loyal 
to  meaning.  Yes,  I  know,  that  at  one  time 
there  was  thought  of  reestablishing  the  Roman 
Empire,  but  what  historian  sees  therein  any- 
thing more  than  at  best  the  repetition  of  a 
name .?     Repetition  can  not  be  literal ;  it  must 


178  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

be  evolution  also.  So,  to  continue,  the  assertion 
of  individuality — whether  national  or  personal 
— being  coincident  with  the  realization  of  a  posi- 
tive share  in  the  mechanical  process  of  society 
under  an  empire,  is  inseparable  from  the  devel- 
opment of  mechanical  skill  in  the  individual. 
Moreover,  it  is  certain  that  the  mechanical  skill 
so  arising  will  be  applied  to  just  that  upon 
which  the  differentiation  or  the  individuality 
depends.  And  upon  what  is  the  individuality 
dependent  ?  To  what  does  it  owe  its  content, 
its  substantial  reality }  Certainly  not  the  hu- 
man, as  at  the  time  conceived,  since  in  terms 
of  this  alone  society  is  an  army,  not  an  organ- 
ism. What  then }  Why,  the  natural  or  the 
physical.  With  the  organic  division  of  empire 
the  asserted  individuals  must  turn,  nay,  they 
have  already  turned  for  expression  to  their  pe- 
culiar environments,  to  their  peculiarly  natural 
resources.  Their  individual  consciousness  has 
its  objective  source  in  a  nature  that  is  not  hu- 
man in  so  far  as  it  differentiates  each  one  of 
their  number  from  all  the  others.  Accordingly, 
instead  of  mechanicalizing  the  human  they 
mechanicalize  the  natural;  and  in  doing  this — 
let  us  keep  in  mind — they  are  only  applying 
the  skill,  as  if  an  inheritance,  which  their  ori- 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     179 

gin  in  the  imperial  army  insures  to  them.  Me- 
chanicaHzation  of  the  natural,  however,  differ- 
entiates not  only  one  individual  from  others 
but  also,  specifically,  the  laborer  from  the 
soldier,  the  skilful,  self-active  individual  from 
the  individual  that  is  only  the  passive  medium 
of  a  mechanical  process.  The  laborer  as  mem- 
ber of  the  society  that  ensues — whether  of  per- 
sonal or  of  national  individuals — is  the  agency, 
through  which  the  future,  and  the  soldier, 
through  which  the  past  is  contemporized  with 
the  present. 

Are  illustrations  necessary.?  Necessary  or 
not,  they  are  very  plentiful  and  as  diverse  as 
plentiful.  The  confessional  as  it  becomes 
mechanical  develops  the  conscience  of  the 
penitent,  who  becomes  himself  a  master  of  the 
ecclesiastical  machinery  and  applies  his  skill  to 
experience  in  general.  A  habit  of  mind  once 
established  is  always  freed  from  the  special 
sphere  of  its  training.  Religion,  furthermore, 
as  it  becomes  doctrinal  or  dogmatic,  by  incul- 
cating a  sense  of  lawfulness  as  such,  makes 
science  not  only  possible  but  inevitable;  like 
Rome  in  her  relation  to  Spartacus,  arming  and 
training  an  enemy.  Monarchy  by  its  very 
absoluteness  becomes  democracy,  since  it  has 


1 80  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HI  STOP  Y. 

to  let  the  people  into  its  secret.  A  teacher 
who  has  a  system  proves  to  be  only  a  part  of 
a  mechanism  which  his  pupils  use  skilfully. 
And,  in  general,  whenever  living  creatures  are 
subjected  to  a  mechanical  process  they  invari- 
ably turn  upon  the  process  itself  and  use  it  to 
their  own  individual  ends.  Always  mechanism 
realizes  organism,  in  the  general  sphere  of  the 
animate  relating  the  living  to  the  inorganic  and 
in  society  the  human  to  the  natural  or  the 
civilized  to  the  uncivilized.  But  the  relation 
must  be  understood  also  as  both  a  widening 
and  a  deepening  of  the  living  or  the  human  or 
the  civilized.  Thus,  to  return  to  the  illustra- 
tions, Spartacus  as  enemy  of  Rome  is  no  longer 
a  slave;  the  Christian,  turned  scientist,  is  not 
Catholic  but  Protestant;  the  obedient  subject 
of  a  monarch  is  already  a  voter;  and  the  wide- 
awake pupil  shares  in  the  teaching. 

So,  again,  the  organic  division  of  empire 
with  its  limitation  of  monarchy  and  its  check 
to  militarism  brings  the  separation  of  laborer 
and  soldier.  Military  service  is  relegated  to  a 
special  class,  the  '* standing  army."  The 
soldier,  however,  ceases  to  be  what  he  had 
been,  since  even  as  a  soldier  he  can  not  but  be 
the  laborer's  contemporary.     He  really  turns 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     i8l 

laborer  himself,  being  employed  by  society  to 
do  a  particular  thing  and  being  in  his  military 
service  at  least  as  much  concerned  with  his 
wages  as  with  the  service  itself  or  being  hence- 
forth more  than  a  mere  soldier.  Peace  instead 
of  war  is  the  object  of  his  maintenance.  In 
brief,  then,  although  visibly  he  is  a  sign  of  the 
original  imperialism,  he  is  also  a  nationalistic 
or  individualistic  factor  in  the  social  life.  To 
read  the  history  of  the  ^  *  balance  of  power ' '  in 
Europe  is  to  see  the  struggle  of  an  organic 
nationalism,  an  internationalism,  to  free  itself 
from  a  persisting  imperialism. 

But,  the  soldier  aside,  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  society  suddenly  acquires  the 
individual  person  as  a  laborer  with  mechanical 
skill.  The  personal  members  of  the  empire 
are  long  in  securing  their  heritage,  for  the 
division  begins  with  nations  or  classes  rather 
than  with  persons  or  at  least  retrospectively  it 
seems  to  begin  so;  so  that  it  can  be  said  with 
almost  scientific  exactness  that  in  proportion 
as  the  classes  are  large  in  size  and  few  in  num- 
ber the  power  over  nature  is  slight  and  the 
expression  of  it  more  dependent  on  the  toil  of 
labor-armies  than  on  natural  or  physical  ma- 
chinery, while  in  proportion  as   the   division 


i82  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

reaches  the  personal  individual  the  power  over 
nature  is  great  and  its  expression  in  a  mechan- 
icalized  nature.  The  history  of  feudalism 
shows  this.  Industrialism,  beginning  with  the 
beginning  of  the  division  of  Rome,  is  seen  to 
be  a  development  from  a  simple  agriculture 
and  a  very  crude  sort  of  manufacture  or  from 
a  condition  of  labor-armies  or  labor-guilds 
dependent  less  on  individual  skill  than  on 
organization  to  a  condition  in  which  even 
agriculture  is  elaborate  manufacture  and  in 
which  manufacture  in  general  relies  on  skill 
and  most  complex  machinery.  Of  course, 
although  not  always  appreciated,  the  simple 
industry  of  the  earlier  time  is  not  without  some 
conscious  measurement  of  natural  resources — 
witness  the  early  systems  of  rents  and  all  the 
laws  or  customs  that  define  in  any  way  the 
position  of  the  laborer — and  such  measurement 
always  implies  some  mechanical  adaptation  of 
physical  force,  but  in  comparison  with  later 
times — except  as  it  illustrates  what  has  been 
asserted  here — this  earher  mechanical  skill  is 
almost  insignificant. 

The  conscious  measurement  of  natural  re- 
sources, mediating  as  it  does  between  the  human 
and  the  natural,  is  an  important  incident  of  the 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     183 

differentiation  of  soldier  and  laborer,  which  we 
have  been  neglecting.  We  had  a  momentary 
view  of  it  when  we  saw  that  the  birth  of  organ- 
ism out  of  mechanism  involves  the  birth  of  in- 
dividual consciousness  and  that  this  conscious- 
ness as  it  rises  relates  the  subjective  and  the 
objective,  the  human  and  the  natural,  but  we 
need  to  look  more  closely.  As  implied  already, 
the  measurement,  the  consciousness  is  at  first 
in  classes  rather  than  in  individual  persons;  or, 
if  in  individuals,  it  is  in  these  as  monarchical 
leaders,  not  as  persons;  and  this  can  have  no 
other  effect  than  to  make  the  thinking  of  the 
time  a  purely  deductive  one  to  the  persons 
themselves.  A  formal  logic,  too,  has  the  place 
of  objective  science,  formal  logic  being  not 
merely  the  linguistic  or  grammatical  logic  of 
scholasticism  but  in  general  the  abstract  study 
of  any  mere  medium  of  expression.  Politics 
and  theology  and  finance  can  be  quite  as  scho- 
lastic as  the  formal  logic  in  the  narrow  sense. 
Thinking  in  classes,  or — to  recall  a  school-day 
memory — *' in  chorus,"  and  abstraction  of  the 
medium  of  expression  and  deduction  as  the 
ideal  reasoning  are  but  three  sides  of  what  is  a 
strictly  equilateral  triangle.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  induction  is  not  lacking  even  here, 


l84  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

since  the  classes  themselves  and  the  conscious- 
ness give  evidence  that  individuality  has  already 
asserted  itself  in  subject  and  in  object  aHke. 
Moreover,  to  issue  again  a  well-v^orn  caution, 
the  past  in  which  we  find  a  deductive  logic,  a 
class-thinking,  and  an  external  medium,  is  only 
as  we  see  it.  This,  however,  does  not  make 
our  observations  any  less  worth  while.  It  only 
enables  us  to  comprehend  them  better.  Abso- 
lutely, consciousness  is  always  at  once  induct- 
ive and  deductive,  although,  if  we  study  history, 
we  have  to  find  the  sciences  developing  from 
the  deductive  to  the  inductive.  Historically  too 
— and  it  is  chiefly  to  this  that  I  have  been  com- 
ing, since  it  is  so  important  in  an  understanding 
of  the  relation  of  industrialism  to  militarism — 
we  can  not  recognize  a  consciously  inductive 
and  objective  thinking  until  the  organic  division 
of  empire  is  seen  to  have  reached  just  such  a 
personal  individuality  as  we  assume  for  our- 
selves. Thus,  the  dimensions  of  Christendom 
and  the  self-consciousness  have  not  changed 
materially  since  Descartes  on  one  side  and  Ba- 
con on  the  other  formulated  the  method  to 
which  individual  thinking  still  adheres."^ 

♦  In  other  words,  to  put  the  truth  of  the  paragraph  differ- 
ently, thinking,  or  consciousness,  is  always  both  social  and  in- 
dividual. Compare  the  discussion  of  the  social  consciousness, 
p.  109  ff .  But  historically  the  thought-process  is  always  seen  as 
from  the  past  and  social  to  the  present  and  individual  or  as  from 
the  deductive  to  the  inductive. 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     185 

But  adequately  to  understand  the  evolution 
of  the  personal  laborer  we  need  to  go  still  deeper. 
The  conscious  measurement  of  natural  resources 
upon  which  expression  of  mechanical  skill  de- 
pends is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  appli- 
cation of  mathematics  to  physical  phenomena. 
So  long,  however,  as  thinking  is  deductive  and 
government  monarchical,  the  mathematics  ap- 
plied is  mensuration  rather  than  anything  else, 
a  mathematics  that  is  not  much  better  than  a 
rule  of  thumb.  Just  as  politically  one  person 
is  made  the  standard  for  the  judgment  of  all 
others,  so  scientifically  one  particular  thing 
as  an  abitrary  unit  is  taken  as  the  measure  of 
everything  else.  Only  as  thinking  becomes 
personally  individual  and  inductive  and  objec- 
tive is  a  pure  mathematics  or  a  pure  mechanics 
possible.*  To  show  just  how  this  is,  in  the 
space  that  can  be  taken  here,  is  not  easy,  and 
yet  the  truth  of  it  is  familiar  to  all  students  of 
history  and  an  historical  truth  never  can  be  in- 

*Kant — is  he  the  last  Roman  or  the  first  great  modern  phi- 
losopher?— finds  the  three  primary  concepts  of  mechanics, 
space  and  time  and  causality,  only  the  apriori  forms  of  the 
individual's  objective  experience  and  so  reduces  all  true  sci- 
ence to  a  pure  mechanics.  Space  and  time  and  causality, 
however,  are  also  only  very  general  or  let  us  say  naturalistic 
names  for  the  attributes  or  prerogatives  of  sovereignty.  Space 
is  domain;  time,  the  unity  of  national  self -consciousness,  and 
causality,  executive  power. 


l86  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

capable  of  explanation.  Moreover,  the  expla- 
nation which  we  seek  seems  to  be  in  the  fact 
that  the  mathematician,  as  such,  is  as  imperial 
as  individual,  his  principles  being  not  less  his 
than  everybody's,  or  that  the  object  studied  in 
mathematics  is  always  a  universal  individual. 
Exactly  the  typical  individual,  which  an  induc- 
tive natural  science  struggles  after  through  all 
the  subtle  device  of  its  experimentation,  math- 
ematics or  mechanics  has  before  it  from  the 
beginning.  Mechanism,  always  subject  to 
mathematical  description,  in  nature  at  large  as 
well  as  in  human  society  presupposes  a  uni- 
versal or  an  imperial  individuality. 

Should  any  one  ask  me  just  what  the  mathe- 
matician's imperial  individual  is  I  should  be 
disposed  to  reply  that  at  least  the  best  repre- 
sentative of  it  is  the  infinitesimal.  Certainly 
no  concept  has  done  more  than  this  to  make  a 
pure  mathematics  or  a  pure  mechanics  pos- 
sible. The  infinitesimal  is  the  individual  freed 
from  any  arbitrary  or  particular  content  and 
by  dint  of  its  freedom  is  as  imperial  or  all- 
inclusive  as  individual.  In  mechanics  infinite 
and  finite  are  all  but  if  not  quite  identified,  and 
at  the  risk  of  seeming  extravagantly  fanciful  I 
must  confess  to  finding,  as  well  as  to  believing 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     187 

that  any  conscientious  historian  will  find  a 
world  of  meaning  in  the  parallelism  between 
the  development  of  the  identification  of  God 
with  nature  and  that  of  the  identification — in 
mathematics — of  the  infinite  with  the  finite. 
Bruno,  the  Cartesians  and  Spinoza,  who  are 
only  the  thinkers  of  their  times  bringing  to 
consciousness  what  their  fellows  effect  uncon- 
sciously or  unreflectively,  do  for  theology 
exactly  what  their  contemporaries,  Kepler  and 
Galileo  and  Newton  and  Leibnitz  do  for  math- 
ematics; they  discover  the  other  world  in  this, 
the  divine  in  the  human  and  natural,  the 
infinite  in  the  finite.  Remember,  too,  that 
the  effect  on  human  society  of  the  conception 
of  the  other  world  as  spaceless  and  timeless,* 
as  wholly  immaterial,  as  strictly  a  negative  of 
this,  is  to  justify  militarism  or  social  mechan- 
icalism  and  that  only  as  the  other  world  comes 
to  be  found  in  this  is  the  individual  set  free  in 
an  organic  social  life;  and,  remembering  this, 
reflect  that  by  what  is  more  than  a  mere  coin- 
cidence the  differential  calculus  so  fundamental 
to  mechanics  and  treating  the  infinite  as  in- 
trinsic to  the  finite  is  a  contemporary  not  only 

*  Obviously  the  infinitesimal  is  spaceless  and  timeless  too; 
as  a  quantity  it  is  zero  itself. 


i88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

of  democratic  institutions,  which  define  society 
as  an  organism,  but  also  of  biology,  which  has 
the  organic  for  its  central  idea.  In  the  monad 
of  Leibnitz,  moreover,  we  see  and  he  seems  to 
have  seen  at  once  the  infinitesimal  of  mech- 
anics and  the  organism  of  biology.  So,  as  was 
suggested  before,  religion — not  theology — is 
the  inspiration  of  science.  It  may  seem  fanci- 
ful to  interpret  history  in  this  way,  but  cer- 
tainly it  is  well  worth  while. 

In  our  discussion  of  conscious  measurement, 
of  deduction  and  induction,  of  mathematics 
and  of  the  infinitesimal  and  the  monad  we 
seem  to  have  lost  sight  of  the  laborer  as  a  per- 
son mechanically  skilful;  but  he  returns  to  our 
view  as  soon  as  we  recall  from  the  preceding 
chapter  what  was  found  to  be  the  relation  in 
society  of  the  laborer  and  the  thinker.  In 
society's  experience  and  progress  the  thinker 
does  but  define  what  the  laborer  enacts.  The 
skilful  mechanic  is  the  serving  contemporary  of 
the  science  of  mechanics;  he  is  a  psychological 
as  well  as  a  sociological  condition  of  it.  Why, 
feeble  indeed  is  the  thinker  who  can  not  read 
the  industrial  individualism  of  Adam  Smith  in 
the  monadology  of  Leibnitz. 

But,  in  conclusion  of  this  rather  long  discus- 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     189 

sion  of  the  separation  of  laborer  and  soldier, 
of  the  birth  of  industrialism  in  militarism  or 
organism  in  mechanism,  we  have  now  to  add 
to  the  several  incidents  already  considered  the 
ever  greater  freedom  of  communication  and 
transportation  between  the  different  parts  of 
the  imperial  whole.  By  what  means  is  this 
freedom  secured?  Necessarily  by  the  same 
means  to  which  the  developing  individuality 
owes  its  reality;  that  is  to  say,  by  the  mechan- 
ical application  of  natural  force.  It  is  justice 
indeed  that  exactly  what  makes  the  individu- 
ality possible  makes  possible  also  the  com- 
munication and  transportation,  in  other  words, 
the  commercial  exchange,  which  the  individu- 
ality requires.  Am  I  thinking  of  the  telegraph 
and  the  locomotive  and  the  printing-press  as 
naturally  contemporary  with  cotton-gins,  with 
looms  and  spindles,  and  with  all  the  complex 
machinery  of  agriculture  and  manufacture? 
As  a  matter  of  course.  Locomotive  and  press, 
cotton-gin  and  the  others  are  extremely  con- 
crete, it  is  true,  but  they  have  their  place  in 
the  philosophy  of  history.  Are  we  mathe- 
maticians? Then  we  can  see  in  them  the 
miraculous  infinitesimal  through  which  we 
have  been  able  to  transcend  the  finiteness  of 


I90  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

space  and  time.  Are  we  economists?  We  see 
in  them  the  imperial  unity  of  industriaHsm,  to 
which  also  belongs  the  same  transcendence  of 
spacial  and  temporal  limitations.  They  do  but 
insure  to  the  individual  laborer  both  his  indi- 
viduality and  the  imperial  sovereignty  that  he 
has  as  his  lawful  inheritance  from  the  soldier. 
They  give  him  an  imperial  as  well  as  an  indi- 
vidual consciousness  and  an  imperial  as  well  as 
an  individual  activity.  They  show  how  right 
we  were  in  thinking  of  the  other  world,  the 
infinite,  as  but  a  principle  in  this,  a  corrective 
of  isolation  and  partiality. 

And  now  we  are  ready  to  turn  to  the  separa- 
tion of  production  and  exchange,  which  was 
also  mentioned  above  in  evidence  of  the  rise  of 
the  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the 
imperial  institutions  of  a  social  life.  This 
particular  separation,  moreover,  being  plainly 
identical  with  that  of  commodity  and  medium 
or  of  machinery  and  mere  nature,*  we  can 
consider  all  three  together.  Under  an  extreme 
militarism  the  bank,  which  controls  exchange, 
and  the  factory,**  which  controls  production, 

*  In  machinery  and  mere  nature  any  technically  informed 
philosopher  can  not  fail  to  see  the  phenomenal  world  of  scien- 
tific experience  and  the  thing-in-itself  of  Kant. 

**  In  the  sense  of  any  instrument  or  institution  of  manu- 
facture in  general. 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     191 

must  be  one  and  the  same  institution,  for 
treasure  or  mere  domain  can  be  the  only  form 
of  property  and  possession  can  be  the  only 
basis  of  the  right  of  property,  production  in 
the  sense  of  manufacture  having  no  place. 
Domain  is  only  the  sphere  or  one  might  almost 
say  the  repository  of  treasure;  and  the  treas- 
ure— through  the  vicissitudes  of  history — may 
include  slaves  and  works  of  art  and  literature 
and  other  evidences  of  a  past  civilization,  but 
its  most  natural  or  logical  form  is  the  precious 
metal,  which  is  a  very  typical  part  of  nature 
as  mere  domain  and  is  valuable  because  natural 
and  relatively  indestructible  and  freely  trans- 
portable and  unlimited  by  any  of  the  special 
pleasures  or  interests  of  mankind.  As  coin 
the  precious  metal  is  as  abstractly  universal  as 
the  other  world  itself  in  which  its  owners  are 
virtually  living.  Such  production,  then,  as 
there  is  can  consist  only  in  getting  and  in 
keeping  treasure  or  the  domain  that  contains 
it  or  particularly  in  getting  and  in  keeping 
coin;  and  with  production  so  conditioned  bank 
and  factory  are  indeed  inseparable  and  physical 
force  expressed  in  an  army  is  the  machinery 
with  which  both  the  banking  and  the  produc- 
tion are  carried  on. 


19^  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY, 

But  the  conditions  of  militarism  are  its  own 
overthrow.  The  movement  of  the  army 
relates  the  other  world  to  this  and  with  the 
relation  the  army  begins  to  disband;  the  sol- 
diers as  soldiers  die.  Whether  we  think  of 
Rome  as  converted  to  Christianity  or  of  her 
subjects  as  surfeited  with  worldly  treasure,  we 
see  her  fall;  we  see  the  disbanding,  the  differ- 
entiation of  her  social  machine;  we  see  the 
other  world  brought  into  this.  Heaven  turned 
earthly  and  worldly  treasure  turned  really 
useful  to  man  and  nature  turned  positively 
productive:  and  through  such  changes  factory 
and  bank — very  much  as  state  and  church — 
are  separated,  and  with  them  commodity  and 
medium,  and  machinery  and  nature. 

Of  these  changes,  interesting  as  they  are,  I 
hesitate  to  speak  in  much  detail,  partly  because 
I  have  already  discussed  them  at  considerable 
length  in  another  book,^  but  chiefly  because  I 
do  not  find  the  detailed  discussion  of  them 
necessary  to  my  present  purposes.  Still  I 
must  add  a  little  to  the  foregoing,  for  there  is 
one  circumstance,  connected  particularly  with 
the  separation  of  medium  and  commodity,  that 
is  of   peculiar  interest.     That  the  bank  as  a 

*  Citizenship  and  Salvation^  pp.  92-102  and  129-136. 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     193 

separate  institution  is  one  of  the  vital  incidents 
of  the  transition  from  the  old  militarism  to  the 
present  industrialism  is  a  well-known  fact  of 
history  and  that  the  factory  has  developed  with 
the  bank  is  another.  The  bank's  function, 
moreover,  is  one  of  exchange  among  individuals 
either  through  its  bills  of  deposit  or  through 
the  loans  by  which  it  makes  production  pos- 
sible, while  the  factory  is  the  great  agent  of 
production;  and  each  is,  to  recall  a  refrain, 
invisibly  what  the  other  is  visibly.  It  is  also 
equally  well  known  to  the  historian  that  with 
the  development  of  industrialism  coin  becomes 
valuable  only  as  one  commodity  among  others, 
while  in  its  capacity  of  medium  of  exchange  it 
approaches  ever  nearer  to  being  a  mere  symbol 
or  economic  figure-head.  Its  transfiguration 
or  translation  is  quite  comparable  with  that  of 
the  political  or  ecclesiastical  monarch  contem- 
porary with  it.  In  finance,  moreover, — and 
this  is  what  I  have  had  specially  in  mind, — the 
change  is  not  without  its  conflict  of  dogmatism 
and  heresy.  Just  as  there  is  the  conflict  of 
ecclesiasticism  and  atheism  and  of  absolutism 
and  anarchy  so  there  is  that  of  metalism  and 
fiatism;*  and  as  always  in  cases  of  conflict  the 

*Is  this  a  new  word?    I  am   not  sure.     Of  course   the 
reference  is  to  the  heresy  of  "fiat-money." 


194  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

right  is  on  neither  side.  ReHgion,  for  exam- 
ple, is  neither  orthodoxy  nor  agnosticism  but 
the  faith  that  is  also  works;  the  natural  sover- 
eignty is  neither  in  a  personal  monarch  nor  in 
the  separate  members  of  society  but  in  the  life 
of  all  as  a  social  life;  and  similarly  in  finance 
the  real  medium  of  exchange  is  neither  a  pre- 
cious metal,  however  stable,  nor  a  bit  of  paper, 
however  stamped,  but  what  the  business  world 
knows  as  credit — credit  of  the  sort  that  really 
**  turns  the  wheels  of  industry."  So  long,  then, 
as  militarism  persists,  threatening  or  positively 
encumbering  the  life  of  an  industrial  society, 
the  dogma  of  metalism  will  persist  too,  and 
with  it  the  heresy  of  fiatism,  but  the  very  con- 
flict of  these  two,  involved  as  it  is  in  the  devel- 
opment of  a  free  industrialism  or  in  what  we 
have  been  calling  the  restoration  of  society  to 
itself,  is  the  earnest  of  a  genuine  credit  becom- 
ing the  medium  of  exchange. 

In  an  organic  freely  industrial  society  pro- 
ductive power,  not  possession,  constitutes  the 
right  to  property.  So  long,  however,  as  any 
particular  commodity — even  gold  ! — serves  as 
the  medium,  there  remains  some  right  in  mere 
possession.  But  credit  becoming  the  medium 
alters  the  case  materially.     And  exactly  what 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     195 

is  credit  ?  It  is  not  something  that  can  ever 
be  hoarded.  It  is  not  something  that  can  ever 
be  lent.  It  is  certainly  not  any  bare  say-so. 
What  then  1  It  is  a  medium  of  exchange  and 
of  nothing  but  exchange.  It  is  financial  or 
commercial  intelligence.  It  is  the  social  con- 
sciousness—which is  as  individual  as  social — 
of  the  productive  capacity  of  the  social  life.* 
For  credit  to  succed  a  metal  or  metals  as  the 
medium  of  exchange  a  prompt  and  accurate 
communication  is  necessary  among  all  the  parts, 
however  distant  or  however  rural,  of  the  com- 
mercial world;  and  the  bank,  not  as  a  treasure- 
house,  not  as  an  institution  merely  of  loans  and 
deposits,  but  as  an  institution  that  operates 
only  in  credit  instruments  and  the  intelligence 
on  which  they  are  based,  must  be  available  to 
every  part  and  every  person  of  the  social 
whole. 

Am  I  understood  here }  If  I  am,  a  perfectly 
logical  connection  will  be  evident  among  these 
different  things  that  follow:  geographical  cen- 
tralization,   arbitrary    class-distinctions,    irre- 

*  Credit,  as  here  defined,  is  to  be  associated  closely  with 
machinery.  The  two  are  but  the  inseparable  aspects  of  an  in- 
dustrial life  or,  as  Spinza  would  have  put  it,  the  parallel  attri- 
butes of  one  substance.  Credit  is  industrialism  on  the  side  of 
mind  or  thought;  machinery,  on  the  side  of  matter  or  exten- 
sion. 


196  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

sponsible  personal  leadership,  artificially  pro- 
tected capital,  ignorant  and  unskilled  labor, 
dogmatic  when  not  heretical  metalism*  in  fi- 
nance, communication  and  transportation  that 
is  neither  socially  nor  geographically  general 
and  that  is  inaccurate  or  insecure  as  well  as 
incomplete,  corrupt  poHtics,  and — not  to  extend 
a  list  that  is  of  indefinite  length — abstract  or 
laissez-faire  science.  Certainly  a  remarkable 
jumble !  And  to  it  might  be  added  a  sectarian 
time-serving  religion,  a  sensational  machine- 
controlled  newspaper,  a  social  code  that  in 
public  and  in  private  takes  the  will  for  the  deed 
and  so  sanctions  incapacity  in  office  and  senti- 
mentality in  morals  generally,  and  literal  **  in- 
heritance both  of  social  position  and  private 
character.  But  I  was  not  to  extend  the  list. 
In  it,  however,  we  have  a  veritable  photograph 
or  rather  a  photographic  *  *  negative ' '  of  our 
own  time ;  as  it  were,  the  system  of  shadows 
cast  by  the  light  of  society's  restoration  to 
itself.  And  in  it  we  have  also  a  summary  his- 
tory of  Christendom. 

*  Heretical  metalism  has  fiatism  for  its  limit.  Of  course 
dogmatism  is  always  a  justification  of  heresy. 

**  **  Literal  "  inheritance  is  the  inheritance  of  a  persistent 
character  or  status,  of  a  character  or  status  that  continues  in 
the  offspring  to  be  literally  what  it  was  in  the  parent. 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION'  TO  ITSELF.     I97 

But  as  further  evidence  of  the  development  of 
the  distinction  between  individual  and  imperial 
institutions  in  the  social  life,  a  development 
that  we  found  coincident  with  the  process  of 
restoration,  there  were  mentioned  above,  as 
will  be  remembered,  two  other  cases  of  differ- 
entiation, the  case  oijus  civile  diWd  jus  gentium 
and  the  case  of  science  and  religion.  Of  these, 
however,  nothing  more  can  be  said  here.  Sci- 
ence and  religion  are  to  be  treated  in  a  separate 
chapter ;  and  the  history  of  jurisprudence  must 
speak  for  itself,  although  I  might  add  to  the 
illustration  given  the  simple  fact  that  the  devel- 
opment of  equity,  as  distinct  from  the  common 
law,  is  contemporaneous  with  that  of  interna- 
tional law.  Both  equity  and  international  law 
make  one  and  the  same  appeal.  They  appeal, 
not  to  the  traditional  or  socially  conventional 
and  instituted  but  to  the  widely  human  and 
natural.  Accordingly  they  serve  organism  in- 
stead of  mechanism  in  the  relations  of  men. 

Finally,  there  are  certain  incidents,  not 
yet  referred  to,  of  that  special  phase  of  the 
process  of  restoration  which  has  been  called 
here  the  naturalization  of  the  supernatural,  and 
to  these  we  must  now  give  some  attention. 
Thus,  as  not  the  least  important  although  pos- 


198  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

sibly  the  least  obvious  among  the  unnoticed 
incidents  of  the  naturalization  of  the  supernat- 
ural, there  is  barbarian  invasion.  In  history 
we  see  barbarian  hordes  overcoming  Rome 
almost  at  the  moment  of  her  conversion  to 
Christianity,  and  so  preventing  her  Christian 
idealism  from  becoming  idle  and  abstract  or 
unworldly.  At  just  the  time,  when  the  church 
has  been  separated  from  the  state*  and  has 
completed  its  organization  and  systematized  its 
doctrines,  the  barbarians  appear,  as  if  the  mes- 
sengers of  nature  or — shall  we  not  say  it } — of 
God  himself,  to  insure  usefulness  or  applica- 
tion. The  Imperial  City  has  the  thought  and 
the  will;  they  supply  the  necessity  and  the 
force.  The  visible  Rome,  already  in  decay, 
they  easily  overcome;  while  the  church  masters 
them,  yet  not  without  adapting — and  this 
means  naturalizing — its  machinery.  The  adap- 
tation, moreover,  or  the  naturalization  ends  in 
Protestantism  ;  or — more  strictly — the  invasion 
itself  is  the  beginning  of  the  Protestant  Refor- 
mation, the  barbarian  invaders,  even  at  their 
conversion  to  Roman  Catholisim,  being  the 
first  Protestants. 

♦Conspicuously  by  the  division  of  Rome  into  an  Eastern 
and  a  Western  Empire. 


SOCIETY'S  RESTORATION  TO  ITSELF.     199 

And,  if  invasion  brings  naturalization  and 
Protestantism,  learning,  in  spite  of  its  cloist- 
ered seclusion — and  literature  and  painting — 
in  spite  of  their  sacred  subjects — and  archi- 
tecture— in  spite  of  its  limitation  to  places  of 
worship — and  pilgrimage — in  spite  of  its  desti- 
nation— bring  them  also.  All  these,  moreover, 
are  the  means  the  church  finds  necessary  in  its 
career  of  conversion  and  adaptation;  argu- 
ments, I  like  to  call  them,  when  I  try  to  com- 
prehend the  reasoning  in  the  complex  all- 
inclusive  history  of  Christendom,  from  the 
natural  to  the  supernatural.  And  they  are 
certainly  very  effective  arguments,  being  of  the 
sort  that  justify  by  fulfilling  without  idola- 
trously  perpetuating  what  they  would  defend. 
Also  in  what  might  well  be  called  the  return  of 
Greece  and  Judea,  in  the  influx  of  Greek  schol- 
ars and  the  revival  of  Greek  learning  and  in 
the  rise  to  prominence  and  power  of  the  Jewish 
banker,  we  see  not  only  an  effective  argument 
from  the  natural  to  the  supernatural  but  also 
a  movement  that  makes  the  process  of  society's 
restoration  to  itself  seem  almost  a  literal  one. 
To  use  Milton's  words,  Greece  and  Judea  are 
*  *  lost ' '  only  to  be   *  *  regained. ' ' 

Protestantism,  moreover,  in  the  end  awakened 


200  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

to  the  full  force  of  its  own  arguments  and  so  be- 
come a  necessity  of  the  personal  consciousness, 
declares  in  all  the  ways  of  its  expression  that, 
since  human  experience  is  the  only  justifica- 
tion, the  other  world  must  be  here  and  now ; 
and  in  realization  of  this  declaration,  in  fulfilment 
of  all  sorts  of  prophecies  of  the  millenium  and 
satisfaction  of  all  sorts  of  political  air-castles 
America  takes  her  place  as  an  organic  part  of 
Christendom.  The  invasion,  that  has  natural- 
ized Catholicism,  Protestantism  turns  into 
exploration  and  discovery,  and  in  history  no 
argument  from  the  natural  to  the  supernatural 
is  more  telling  than  this  of  the  discovery  of 
America.  In  the  discovery  of  America,  too, 
not  more  for  what  it  has  realized  in  the  new 
world  than  for  what  it.  has  brought  about  in 
in  the  old,  we  have  most  positively  expressed — 
for  what  but  this  have  we  found  democracy 
and  industrialism  and  liberty  of  belief  to  sig- 
nify } — the  restoration  of  society  to  itself. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

PROGRESS  IN  THE  ACTIVITY  OF  SOCIETY. 

ALIENATION  and  restoration,  traced  in  the 
last  two  chapters  as  altogether  distinct 
stages  in  the  life  of  society,  are  in  reality  like 
Heraclitus'  '^wayup"  and  ''way  down."  They 
are  *  *  the  same. ' '  Indeed  the  dark  philosopher 
himself  may  be  imagined  to  say  of  them 
that  in  the  fire  of  social  progress  each  is 
as  a  back-log  to  the  other.  Were  the  relation 
less  close,  were  they  in  any  way  separate,  the 
progress  of  society  could  never  satisfy  the  de- 
mands that  our  thinking  has  made  upon  the 
conception  of  progress.  Simply,  progress  is 
not  genuine  if  not  both  conservative  and  rad- 
ical.* 

The  intimacy  of  the  two  processes  was  man- 
ifested to  us  in  the  fact  that  the  same  agencies 
could  be  appealed  to  in  explanation  of  them 
both.     Thus,  the  art  of  Greece  alienated;  the 

*  Here  it  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  say,  because  virtually 
it  is  to  reiterate,  that  in  general  only  the  activity  of  an  organ- 
ism, in  which  unity  and  difference  are  identified,  can  be  both 
conservative  and  radical.  For  an  organism  to  be  is  to  progress. 


202  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

art  of  Christendom  restored.  Art,  however, 
and  all  the  other  expressions  of  society's  reflec- 
tion upon  the  social  life  always  both  alienate 
and  restore;  they  must  ever  do  one  in  doing 
the  other.  The  art  of  Christendom  has  cer- 
tainly revived  a  life  that  had  seemed  dead, 
restoring  an  earlier  civilization  to  the  con- 
sciousness and  activity  of  the  present,  but  also 
and  with  no  less  truth  it  has  brought  a  ration- 
alism and  a  criticism  that  are  alienating  Christ- 
endom from  itself.  Moreover,  at  risk  of 
seeming  only  verbally  gymnastic,  we  need  to 
add  that  the  alienated  Christendom  has  been 
taking  the  restored  Greece  and  Judea  with  it, 
so  that  it  is  as  if  the  past's  rebirth  were  the 
present's  death.  Has  not  the  self-consciousness 
of  Christendom  made  both  Greek  history  and 
Jewish  history  essential  to  Christian  history, 
and  in  doing  this  has  it  not  also  given  both 
Greek  and  Jew  an  active  share  in  the  life  of 
Christendom }  To  face  our  paradox  boldly, 
the  old,  the  long-ago,  is  not  dead  but  lives  in 
the  new,  while  the  new  dies  as  the  old  revives. 
Frequently  it  is  said  that  history  repeats 
itself,  but  that  is  not  what  I  am  saying  here. 
What  thoughtful  person  would  say  of  a  runner 
that  in  his  successive  strides  he  was  constantly 


PROGRESS  IN  ACTIVITY  OF  SOCIETY.      203 

repeating  himself?  No  race  is  a  series  of 
repeated  strides  and  no  history,  or  no  evolu- 
tion, however  rhythmic,  is  a  series  of  repeated 
**  moments."  Any  movement,  that  of  racing 
or  that  of  human  progress,  is  an  absolutely 
indivisible  whole;  what  we  may  choose  to  see 
as  the  action  of  a  moment  or  a  part  is  in 
reality  all-inclusive;  and,  this  being  true,  to 
speak  of  repetition  in  the  runner's  race  or  in 
man's  history  is  to  be  even  worse  than  thought- 
less. The  present  never  repeats  the  past,  for 
the  past  is  a  related  part  of  the  life  of  the 
present.  What  is  memory,  forsooth,  but  a 
peculiar  consciousness  accompanying  certain 
disturbances  in  a  body  that  is  all  together  and 
all  at  once? 

How  can  I  make  myself  clear?  We  are  so 
accustomed  to  divide  time  into  intervals,  and 
in  the  intervals  to  see  a  series  of  successive 
processes,  that  any  other  demands  upon  our 
thinking  are  grossly  fanciful  if  not  hopelessly 
unintelligible.  They  seem  to  promise  nothing 
but  paradoxes,  and  to  many  paradoxes  are  as 
stones  when  bread  is  wanted.  But  paradoxes, 
like  stones,  have  an  important  r61e  in  human 
life.  Thus,  as  regards  the  present  discussion, 
we  have  found  another  than  a  composite  divis- 


204  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

ible  time  in  which  to  read  history  and  in  spite 
of  the  paradoxes  that  it  leads  us  into  the  new 
reading  feeds  our  thought.  In  time,  as  we 
have  found  it,  there  is  always  a  backward 
as  well  as  a  forward  movement  or  quite  with- 
out the  verbal  contradiction  activity  is  always 
organic  differentiation.  Any  process  of  the 
present,  then,  notably  the  social  movement  of 
Christendom,  must  be  as  if  filling  the  time  of 
all  human  history. 

And  here  do  but  revive  some  of  our  earlier 
general  conclusions.  '  *  The  life  of  the  present 
and  the  life  of  the  past  are  wrongly  thought  of 
as  two  lives.  .  .  .  Not  those  that  are  now 
gone  once  lived  and  we  live,  but  they  and  we 
are  living;  they  in  us  and  we  with  them." 
*  *  Life  or  action  in  its  temporal  sequences  is 
but  the  continuous  expression  of  the  persistent 
relations  of  coexistences. ' '  The  individual — 
person  or  nation  or  civilization — is  a  ''vital 
relation,  "an  ' '  organic  function,  * '  that  ' '  trans- 
cends any  mere  bounds  of  space  and  time"  and 
that  '  *  has  an  immortality  that  is  as  substantial 
and  inviolable  as  the  universe  itself. ' ' 

Restoration,  in  the  light  now  upon  it,  is  not 
far  from  being  equivalent  to  the  organic  recap- 
itulation of   the    past.      It  is  the  process  by 


PROGRESS  IN  ACTIVITY  OF  SOCIETY.      205 

which  the  past  is  related  to  the  present  and 
changed  as  the  relation  demands.  And  aliena- 
tion, in  its  turn,  is  the  organic  anticipation  of 
the  future.  The  two,  moreover,  mutually 
dependent  and  inseparable  as  they  are,  do  but 
show  that  contemporization  of  past  and  future 
with  the  present  which  we  saw  to  be  so  essen- 
tial to  a  truly  progressive  activity.  Yes,  they 
are  stages  or  moments  of  progress,  as  already 
they  have  been  treated  here;  given  a  particular 
ideal  or  standard  to  determine  one's  judgment, 
as  when  one  has  regard  to  a  particular  history, 
for  example  the  history  of  Christendom,  and 
they  are  bound  to  appear  in  a  temporal  series; 
but  they  are  always  contemporaneous  as  well 
as  successive,  one  being  always  active  in  the 
other.  Day  and  night  could  not  be  more  truly 
both  contemporary  and  successive  than  they. 
In  short,  then,  as  has  been  asserted  here  so 
often  in  one  way  or  another,  the  new  is  not 
less  alive  in  the  present  than  the  old;  as  in 
walking,  so  in  human  history,  so  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  life  generally.  Everywhere  the  activity 
that  is  also  progress  reaches  forward  and  out- 
ward at  the  same  time  that  it  reaches  backward 
and  inward.  Advance  always  involves  d.  pres- 
ent  animation  or  more  specifically  with  refer- 


2o6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

ence  to  human  affairs  a  present  civilization  at 
once  of  the  prehistoric  past  and  of  the  Hfeless 
or  unciviHzed  or  shall  we  not  say  the  post- 
historic  future;  it  brings  into  recognition  and 
more  vital  expression  what  had  seemed  tempo- 
rally and  spatially  external.  When  has  human 
progress  been  without  both  a  new  conscious- 
ness of  an  ever  earlier  civilization  and  a  devel- 
oped sympathy  for  still  uncivilized  parts? 
Progress  seems  to  mean  realization  of  the 
future  through  glorification  or  at  least  justifica- 
tion of  the  past.  What,  for  example,  has 
meant  more  to  Christianity  than  its  discovery 
of  a  pre-Christian  existence.^  And,  with 
regard  to  what  is  spatially  external,  it  was 
surely  the  more  inclusive  life  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean that  so  intensified  and  deepened  the 
life  of  Greece  and  Judaea  as  to  set  them  quite 
beside  themselves,  and  today  it  is  a  more 
inclusive  life  that  is  alienating  Christendom. 
Here  is  not  exactly  the  place  for  prophecy,^ 
but  there  seems  to  be  a  general  agreement  that 
the  future  of  Christendom  is  in  some  substan- 
tial way  to  involve  the  life  of  the  un-Christia'n 
Orient,  and  the  reasons  are  many  for  attribut- 
ing the  present  alienation  to  the  Eastern  Ques- 
tion.  This  Eastern  Question,  it  is  not  necessary 


PROGRESS  IN  ACTIVITY  OF  SOCIETY.      207 

to  say,  is  and  always  has  been  a  concrete  con- 
dition as  well  as  a  question,  a  living  relation- 
ship as  well  as  a  consciously  formulated  prob- 
lem, and  besides  being  political  it  has  been  also 
economic  and  psychological  and  theological. 
Christianity  came  from  the  East,  and  with  it 
came  other  gifts.  Perhaps,  then,  it  is  not  so 
extravagant,  as  it  may  seem  at  first,  to  imagine 
that  the  East,  taken  for  what  it  has  meant  both 
historically  and  geographically,  both  spiritually 
and  materially,  is  the  cause  of  the  lights  and 
shadows  that  we  found  in  the  conditions  of  our 
present  life.  The  sense  of  isolation,  the  con- 
sciousness of  unfulfilled  responsibilities,  always 
makes  both  lights  and  shadows,  and  it  is  cer- 
tain that  no  one  in  the  Occident  has  been  free 
from  such  a  consciousness  since  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era. 

But  I  may  get  mystical,  if  I  go  on.  True, 
there  are  times  when  clearness  is  a  fault. 
Enough,  however,  if  in  the  complex  phenomena 
of  history  which  we  have  been  studying  we 
have  found  presented  to  us  only  a  wonderfully 
magnified  illustration  of  what  progress  is —  * '  the 
timeless  because  defining  and  contemporizing 
law  of  the  past,  whether  as  thought  or  as  en- 
vironment, becoming  the  motive,  which  is  only 


^  PHIL  O  SOPHY  OF  HIS  TOR  Y. 

the  defined  and  contemporized  future,  of  the 
all-including  present. ' '  Confessedly,  a  rather 
forbidding  formula,  and  it  does  not  improve 
much  with  its  repetitions,  but  after  all,  as  we 
often  say  of  our  uncomely  friends,  '  *  handsome 
is  that  handsome  does. ' ' 


Part  III. 
HISTORICTL  STUDIES. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

REASON  AND  RELIGION. 

THE  lig^hts  and  shadows  that  mean  aliena- 
tion or  restoration,  according  to  the 
direction  of  our  looking,  and  that  somehow, 
let  us  say  because  of  the  necessities  of  vision 
or  the  laws  of  optics,  prevent  our  undivided 
attention  in  either  direction,  are  nowhere  more 
striking  than  in  the  relation  of  reason  and 
religion.  In  fact  it  would  not  be  difficult  to 
reduce  all  history  to  what  is  sometimes  called 
the  conflict  between  the  two,  and  if  history 
were  so  reduced  the  life  that  is  would  naturally 
appear  in  the  same  form.  For  religion  and 
reason — what  are  they  but  action  or  impulse 
and  inaction  or  consciousness.?  And  their  con- 
flict— what  but  that  between  impulse  and 
consciousness  .J* 

Reason  is  sometimes  identified  with  science. 
It  is,  however,  as  used  here,  a  more  general 
term,  being  synonymous  with  thought.  Science 
we  have  found  to  be  but  one  moment  in  a  pro- 
cess of  thought — or  reason — that  has  control, 


^12  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

or  inhibition,  as  one  of  its  incidents  and  activity 
merely  for  activity's  sake  as  the  other  and  that 
expresses  itself  politically  in  the  development 
of  distinct  classes,  notably  the  leisured  think- 
ing classes  and  the  mechanically  living  working 
classes  and  geographically  in  the  rise  of  an 
urban  and  the  decay  of  the  rural  civilization. 
Other  moments,  as  will  be  recalled,  are  legis- 
lation, art,  and  philosophy,  science  coming 
between  the  last  two.  The  conflict  of  reason 
and  religion,  therefore,  or  of  science  and 
religion,  begins  with  the  beginning  of  this  pro- 
cess, with  the  appearance  of  a  thinking  class 
and  the  development  of  the  city. 

But,  furthermore,  it  must  be  kept  in  mind 
that  those  two  incidents,  control  and  activity 
for  its  own  sake  or  mechanical  activity  are  not 
strictly  two  but  one  essentially,  being  func- 
tionally or  organically  related.  Each  of  the 
two  is  psychologically  and  sociologically  a  con- 
dition of  the  other,  and  in  this  unity  they 
really  give  evidence  of  the  rise  among  the 
people  of  a  life,  an  activity,  that  promises  to 
relate  the  people  intimately  and  positively  to 
what  at  the  beginning  they  imagine  is  quite 
alien  to  them.  Thus,  in  course  of  time,  the 
thinkers  lose  their  patriotism  and  the  city  even 


REASON  AND  RELIGION,  213 

avows  cosmopolitanism;  the  laborers  pass  into 
socialists  of  some  kind  and  the  country  becomes 
the  home  of  foreigners.  In  other  words,  the 
conscious  control  and  the  mechanical  and 
relatively  unconscious  activity  for  its  own  sake, 
which  makes  the  consciousness  possible,  are 
themselves  for  the  sake  of  the  more  inclusive, 
the  deeper  and  the  broader  life  that  is  inducing 
the  change.  At  first,  as  was  said,  the  people 
may  view  their  abstract  thinking  and  their 
mechanical  living  as  means  of  mere  defense, 
but  gradually  and  inevitably  there  arises  a 
more  positive  interest  in  what  seems  to  be 
opposing  them  and  with  this  their  treachery, 
which  is  also  something  else,  asserts  itself  and 
the  self-consciousness  and  conventional  living 
give  way  to  the  new  life. 

And  what  has  religion  to  do  here.?  Well,  I 
must  repeat  that  religion,  which  has  ^o  do  with 
action  or  impulse,  and  reason,  which  has  to  do 
with  inaction  or  consciousness,  come  to  be 
distinguished  in  the  social  life  only  as  country 
and  city  or  as  labor  and  thought  are  distin- 
guished. Religion  identifies  itself  chiefly  with 
those  that  work.     Geographically  it   has   its 


214  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

stronghold  in  the  rural  districts.*  Religion  and 
reason,  then,  must  be  organically  one,  socio- 
logically and  psychologically  dependent;  and 
the  moments  in  the  development  of  religion 
must  be  thoroughly  sympathetic  with  those  in 
the  development  of  reason.  Thus,  religion 
must  move,  and  the  historian  knows  that  it 
does  move,  through  ecclesiastical  polity  and 
aesthetic  ritualism  to  ** rational"  theology, 
while  reason  passes  through  jurisprudence  and 
art  to  exact  science,  and  in  either  case  the 
process  is  one  of  alienation.  Moreover,  when 
the  two  have  reached  their  third  moments, 
society  begins  to  feel  and  comes  in  course  of 
time  to  say  that  religion  is  not  rational  theol- 
ogy or  that  the  religious  life  is  not  ecclesiasti- 
cism,  and  that  reason  or  thought  is  not  abstract 
science  or  science  only  for  science's  sake,  and 
with  this  awakening  religion  is  seen  to  turn 
* '  liberal, ' '  keeping  the  letter  but  affirming  only 
the  spirit,  and  science  to  turn  *  *  positivistic, ' ' 
keeping   the    formulae    but  only  as   '  *  working 

*  That  I  am  here  making  the  case  simpler  than  it  really  is 
I  am  well  aware,  but  I  am  hardly  likely  to  be  misuaderstood. 
The  distinctions  that  I  make  depend  on  differences  of  an  or- 
ganic life  in  society,  not  on  the  exclusive  or  isolating  differences 
of  a  merely  composite  life.  Religion  has  its  own  thinkers,  the 
theologians,  just  as  science  has  its  own  laborers,  the  mechanics, 
and  religion  and  science  are  also  geographically  coextensive. 


REASON  AND  RELIGION.  215 

hypotheses."  In  short,  a  motive  to  philoso- 
phy is  in  the  consciousness  of  the  people,  and 
there  appear  in  society,  as  if  visible  exponents 
of  the  change,  religious  spirits,  vAxo  have  as 
their  ideal  the  application  to  life  itself,  to  social 
conditions,  to  human  needs,  of  scientific  ideas 
or  principles.  These  pioneers,  however,  who 
are  independent  alike  of  the  church  and  of  the 
school  or  university,  are  doomed  to  fail  par- 
tially, when  not  wholly,  in  their  longing  to 
bring  impulse  and  consciousness,  religion  and 
reason  together,  for  on  the  one  hand  they  lack 
the  necessary  machinery  and  on  the  other  the 
necessary  understanding  to  make  their  labor 
effective.  They  are  would-be  reformers,  the 
laborers  or  servants  of  philosophy,  but  the 
society  to  which  they  belong,  being  still  at 
least  formally  orthodox  and  conservative, 
damns  them  and  hinders  them  by  finding  them 
irreligious  or  even  atheistic  and  unscientific  or 
even  cranky  and  quack.  Perhaps  nothing 
shows  the  alienation  of  society  from  itself  so 
emphatically  as  this  appearance  of  non- 
religious — or  non-ecclesiastical — religion  and 
non-scientific — or  non-academic — science.  It 
is,  moreover,  as  we  know,  an  earnest  of  the 
last  moment  in  the  process  of  alienation,  when 


2l6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

alienation  is  manifestly  restoration;  the  mo- 
ment of  religion  and  reason,  impulse  and  con- 
sciousness, identified;  the  moment,  in  a  word, 
when  change  or  even  revolution  or — shall  we 
not  say? — transfiguration  comes,  not  exactly 
to  the  life  of  society,  but  to  the  body,  to  the 
institutions. 

The  foregoing  sketch,  rapid  and  concise  as 
it  is,  suffices  to  show  that  the  conflict,  so  much 
talked  of,  is  not  of  religion  and  reason  but  of 
theology,  which  is  religion  alienated  from  itself, 
and  of  science,  which  is  reason  alienated  from 
itself,  and  that  the  alienation  in  either  case  is 
a  perfectly  natural  incident  of  a  society's  strug- 
gle with  itself,  of  the  tension  of  a  society's 
effort  at  expression  or  adjustment.  In  justifi- 
cation of  this  too  much  emphasis  can  not  be 
laid  on  the  unity  of  spirit,  the  formal  unity, 
which  has  been  indicated,  of  the  two  opponents. 
Unity  of  form  or  spirit  in  the  contestants  is 
really  a  law  of  all  conflict.  Thus,  to  add  to 
what  has  been  said  above,  as  regards  theology 
and  science,  both  are  rationalistic;  both  are 
dogmatic;  both  would  have  it  that  their  form- 
ulae or  creeds  are  ends  in  themselves;  and  both 
are  abstract  and  unsocial,  professional  and  in- 
stitutional.    The  liberalism  which  passes  into 


REASON  AND  RELIGION  217 

a  virtual  agnosticism  of  the  one  is  quite  in  line 
with  the  positivism  of  the  other.  If  one  is 
only  sentimental  in  what  it  does,  being  so  spir- 
itual as  to  be  thoroughly  material,  as  when 
charity  is  confined  to  gifts  of  money,  and  is  in 
consequence  as  likely  to  do  harm  as  to  do  good, 
the  other  is  at  the  same  time  cold  and  indiffer- 
ent, or  laissez  faire,  and  so  from  its  side  quite 
as  harmful  as  helpful.  But,  agreeing  so  re- 
markably in  all  these  ways,  how  do  they  differ.? 
Only  in  visible  content;  in  the  architecture  of 
their  buildings,  the  personnel  of  their  followers, 
and  the  matter  of  their  preaching.  Some  one 
objects,  bidding  me  to  remember,  among  many 
other  things,  the  wide  difference,  spiritual  as 
well  as  material,  between  the  doctrines  of 
Christianity  and  those  of  evolution.  I  have  to 
reply,  however,  that  it  is  not  at  all  fanciful  to 
read  the  doctrines  of  orthodox  theology  in  those 
of  evolution  or  of  science  generally.*  Sponta- 
neous genesis  is  only  science  for  creation;  genus 
or  species  is  only  science  for  church  or  sect; 
and  chance  for  miracle,  the  exact  law  or  form- 
ula for  the  intuited  dogma,  the  force-endowed 

*  See  an  article  in  The  Monist^  Jan.,  1899,  ''Evolution 
Evolved — A  Philosophical  Chriticism;"  also,  in  The  Philo- 
sophical Review^  July,  1898,  "Epistemology  and  Physical 
Science — A  Fatal  Paralleliim. " 


2i8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

atom  or  the  vital  unit  for  the  soul-endowed 
body,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  So,  implicitly 
or  metaphysically,  the  teachings  of  science  and 
the  teachings  of  theology  are  not  essentially 
different,  however  wide  apart  they  may  be  ex- 
ternally. But  the  external,  the  material  differ- 
ence— does  it  amount  to  nothing  ?  Of  course 
it  amounts  to  something.  It  makes  the  conflict 
real,  the  formal  unity  being  that  which  makes 
it  only  possible;  or  rather  the  formal  unity  and 
material  difference  show  how  each  of  the  op- 
ponents is  as  much  in  conflict  with  itself  as 
with  anything  outside.  How  else  explain  the 
dogmatism  of  the  one  or  the  positivism  of  the 
other }  The  inefficient  activity  of  the  one  or 
the  efficient  inactivity  of  the  other }  The  clois- 
tered and  scheduled  ritual  of  the  one  or — what 
shall  I  say } — the  physical  exercise  of  the  other.** 
And  the  conflict  of  theology  and  science, 
whether  with  themselves  or  with  each  other, 
only  shows  how  a  society  as  well  as  an  individ- 
ual person  must  always  look  before  it  leaps. 
The  conflict  is  the  looking.  Impulse  keeps  its 
traditional  motives — hence  the  dogmatism  of 
theology — until  science  becomes  really  applica- 
ble, and  thought  has  to  be  equally  out  of  touch 
with  reality,  equally  formal  and  abstract,  until 


REASON  AND  RELIGION.  219 

its  own  accuracy  has  changed  it  from  knowl- 
edge into  motive.  But  let  these  changes  be  real- 
ized, and  action  is  freed  from  mere  doing,  from 
mere  ritual,  and  identified  with  thinking,  and 
thought  from  mere  science  and  identified  with 
action;  the  word  becomes  incarnate. 

But  science  is  the  limit  of  art,  and  in  view 
of  the  undisputed  intimacy  between  art  and 
religion  it  is  worth  our  while  to  see  in  just  what 
way  art  persists  in  science.  Curiously  enough 
art  and  science  never  seem  fully  in  sympathy 
with  each  other,  the  limit  appearing  to  outgrow 
its  own  origin.  The  difference  between  the 
two  is  closely  parallel  with  that  between  man 
and  nature,  the  subjective  and  the  objective. 
Science  would  eliminate  the  human  altogether, 
and  so  be  literally  objective  or  naturalistic. 
When  all  is  said,  however,  science  is  by  no 
means  so  far  from  art  as  it  often  imagines  itself. 
Thus,  as  all  agree,  art  objectifies  human  life  or 
human  experience,  putting  its  achievements  on 
the  stage  of  consciousness,  dramatizing  its 
struggle  and  its  victories,  exposing  it,  and  re- 
vealing in  it  a  law  or  a  will  that  is  superior  to 
human  law  or  human  will,  but  does  this  in  ma- 
terial that  is  either  visibly  human  or  sensuously, 
subjectively   stimulating  to  the  human;   and 


220  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY, 

science  also  objectifies  and  dramatizes  human 
life,  but  in  the  natural.  Science  sees  men  as 
animals  or  even  as  mere  bodies;  society  as  only 
a  genus  or  species,  or  as  a  group  of  atoms  or 
molecules;  activity  as  mere  natural  life  or  even 
as  physical  motion  ;  and  death  as  only  so  much 
change.  Science,  then,  is  art  with  a  microscope. 
The  laboratory  is  its  theater;  the  report  or 
contribution, its  novel  or  its  poem;  the  diagram, 
its  painting;  and  the  equation,  which  literally 
reduces  everything  to  nothing,  at  once  its  com- 
edy and  its  tragedy.  But  being  art  at  its  limit 
or  art  with  the  distinction  betwen  man  and 
nature  or  subject  and  object  become  the  merest 
convention,  science  fails  to  find  even  a  suspic- 
ion of  personality  in  the  superior  will  or  law 
that  it  reveals.  Art  is  always  teleological,  cre- 
ationalistic;  but  science  recognizes  and  realizes 
the  implied  fatalism,  preserving  what  is  at  best 
only  a  formal  teleology,  regarding  all  that  is 
ultimate  as  absolutely  unknowable. 

But,  finally,  art  is  the  new  transcending  with- 
out surrendering  the  old;  a  radical  conserva- 
tism; lawlessness  persistently  lawful;  cosmo- 
politanism or  naturalism  remaining  patriotic  or 
humanistic.  This  is  art,  and  science  is  its  last 
word,  its  dying  message.     Rational  theology, 


REASON  AND  RELIGION.  321 

then,  contemporary  with  science,  is  also  the 
last  word,  the  concluding  rite  of  a  sensuous 
ceremonial.  And  thought  and  religion,  being 
each  real  because  in  and  of  the  other,  follow 
quickly;  the  new  becomes  free  and  active;  the 
human  identifies  itself  with  the  natural,  with 
the  world-reason,  and  through  the  identification 
finds  the  natural  personal. 

So  we  make  reason  religious  and  religion  ra- 
tional. The  two  are  one  in  the  Incarnate  Word, 
which  restores  or  redeems  man,  while  it  changes 
or  even  destroys  his  political  and  geographical 
devices. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

I  I ISTORY  may  be  seen  also  as  a  conflict  of 
■  ■  good  and  evil;  and,  if  history,  then  the 
present  too. 

Sometimes  this  conflict  is  regarded  as  be- 
tween distinct  forces  or  beings,  sometimes — 
more  abstractly — as  between  the  spiritual  and 
the  material,  sometimes  as  between  the  human 
and  the  natural,  sometimes  as  between  differ- 
ent classes  of  living  creatures  or  still  more  nar- 
rowly of  human  beings,  but  no  one  of  these 
numerous  views  is  adequate  to  the  conception 
of  history  at  which  we  have  arrived.  All  of 
these  are  but  one  in  this  respect.  They  make 
the  good  and  the  evil  separate  and  independent 
and  turn  the  conflict  into  one  of  either  annihi- 
lation or  exclusion,  whereas  from  our  stand- 
point history,  which  is  the  liberation  of  activity 
in  its  own  realized  law,  can  admit  neither  the 
annihilation  nor  the  exclusion  of  any  one  of  its 
incidents.  Conflict  that  annihilates  or  excludes 
is  meaningless  to  us. 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  223 

And  equally  inadequate  to  our  conception  of 
history  is  the  notion,  not  uncommon  today, 
that  the  good  and  the  evil  are  wholly  relative 
to  times  and  conditions.  As  usually  understood 
this  is  only  another  way  of  making  the  conflict 
meaningless,  since  it  makes  the  good  and  the 
evil  themselves  unreal  or  unsubstantial. 

But,  if  the  good  and  the  evil  are  neither  self- 
existent  and  absolute  nor  relative,  what  can 
they  be  1  Indeed  is  there  any  third  view  of 
them  open  to  us  ?  There  is  this  possibility. 
The  distinction  between  the  two  may  be  real 
and  substantial,  being  a  necessary  incident  or  a 
necessary  experience  of  all  activity ;  a  real 
incident,  then,  or  a  real  experience  of  all  life. 
Is  this  consistent  with  history  as  the  liberation 
of  activity  in  its  own  realized  law }  It  certainly 
is.  History,  so  conditioned,  can  never  be  free 
from  the  tension  of  a  lawful  expression  of  itself, 
from  the  conflict  of  the  good  as  lawfulness  and 
the  evil  as  lawlessness.  Moreover,  just  be- 
cause the  mere  expression  of  activity  must 
always  bring  a  clearer  consciousness  of  its  con- 
ditions, the  lawful  and  the  lawless,  although 
always  significant  can  be  neither  absolute  nor 
relative.  In  fact  lawfulness,  when  for  its  own 
sake,  is  become  lawless  and  lawlessness  as  inde- 


224  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

pendence  of  mere  convention  is  lawful.  The 
two,  in  short,  are  always  necessarily  distin- 
guished, but  neither  of  them  exists  by  itself  or 
in  mere  antithesis  to  the  other.  They  are  the 
differentiated  conditions  of  a  life  or  an  activity 
that,  being  indivisible,  gives  to  all  of  its  condi- 
tions mutual  dependence  and  determination. 
They  are  neither  absolute  nor  relative,  because 
themselves  a  relation.  Of  them,  as  we  see 
them  opposed,  we  have  to  say  that  each  is 
invisibly  whatever  the  other  is  visibly  or — in 
another  formula  which  is  directly  applicable  to 
the  distinction  of  the  good  and  the  bad  in  so- 
ciety and  which  is  also  getting  to  be  one  of  our 
refrains — that  each  is  psychologically  and  soci- 
ologically dependent  on  the  other. 

Here  we  shall  have  to  confine  ourselves  to 
the  conflict  of  good  and  evil  as  a  social  phen- 
omenon, although  whatever  is  said  can  not  but 
be  applicable  mutatis  mutandis  in  natural 
science  as  interested  in  good  and  evil  in  nature 
or  in  psychology  and  ethics  as  interested  in 
good  and  evil  in  the  personal  individual. 
Society  only  mediates  between  nature  and  the 
individual. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  consciousness  of 
evil  or,  as  indicated  above,  of  lawlessness,  is 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  ^25 

natural  to  a  progressive  social  life  for  the  reason 
that  a  life,  whose  expression  defines  the 
knowledge  of  its  conditions,  can  not  fail  to 
discover  evil  in  itself;  and  this  consciousness 
has  the  form  of  condemnation  or  resentment. 
A  progressive  life  is  ever  condemning  itself. 
The  evil,  however,  is  evil  only  as  it  is  discov- 
ered; it  is  evil  only  with  the  retrospection. 
The  condemnation,  too,  is  never  without 
approval  also,  the  despair  over  recognized  evil 
never  without  a  sense  of  good.  A  Hfe  that 
knows  its  evil  is  inherently,  it  is  already 
actively  and  materially  good. 

But  true  as  this  is  it  must  not  for  a  moment 
be  understood  to  mean  that  either  the  approval 
or  the  condemnation  is  of  specific  activities  or 
ways  of  expression,  for  under  all  the  conditions 
no  way  of  expression,  whether  as  manifested 
in  an  individual  or  as  manifested  in  a  particular 
group  or  class,  can  be  good  or  bad  in  itself. 
No  way  of  expression  can  be  so  independent  of 
the  changing  life  as  to  require  either  restraint 
or  cultivation  for  the  sake  of  anything  intrinsic 
to  its  isolated  self.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the 
liberation  of  a  society's  life  in  its  own  realized 
law,  not  the  loss  nor  yet  the  addition  or  the 
mere   perpetuation  of  any  particular  thing,  is 


226  PHIL  O SOPHY  OF  HISTOR  Y. 

progress.  Condemnation,  then,  and  approval 
are  both  formally  and  materially  inseparable 
and  complementary  phases  of  the  conscious- 
ness that  life  induces  and  that  would  make  life 
ever  more  at  one  with  itself,  ever  more  consis- 
tent, ever  more  organic.  Even  with  regard  to 
the  objects  upon  which  they  are  directed  they 
are  mutually  inclusive,  they  are  coextensive. 

This  is  hard  to  understand,  but  to  the  his- 
torian there  is  the  very  clearest  evidence  of  it 
in  the  way  in  which  the  two  opposing  classes 
of  society,  the  good  and  the  bad,  the  law- 
abiding  and  the  lawless,  literally  involve  each 
other.  Only  a  short  time  ago  it  was  remarked 
that  lawfulness  for  its  own  sake,  which  is  just 
what  makes  the  distinction  between  the  con- 
sciously good  and  those  who  are  said  to  be 
bad,  is  lawlessness,  and  that  lawlessness,  sep- 
arating the  consciously  bad  from  the  good,  is 
lawfulness,  but  a  much  more  direct  and  per- 
haps a  much  more  sensational  way  of  saying 
the  same  thing  is  that  what  is  good  and  what 
is  bad  in  society  are  never  under  any  circum- 
stances to  be  identified  with  separate  social 
classes.  In  a  society  that  is  an  organism  all 
are  good  together  and  all  are  bad  together. 
The  distinctions  of  classes  mark,  not  a  conflict 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  227 

merely  of  separate  parts  with  each  other,  but  a 
conflict  rather  of  each  part  with  itself  or  of 
society  as  an  organic  whole  with  itself. 

The  illustrations  of  this  almost  if  not  quite 
startling  truth  are  both  numerous  and  con- 
vincing. Thus,  such  in  society  as  identify 
themselves  with  a  laissez-faire  science  are  evil 
to  those  who  are  identified  with  ecclesiasticism 
and  theological  dogmatism.  The  theism  of 
the  latter  finds  only  atheism  in  the  former. 
But  it  is  an  old  story  to  us  that  each  is  what- 
ever the  other  is,  that  the  two  are  organically 
one,  being  mutually  determining  incidents  of 
the  same  life.  And,  under  precisely  the  same 
conditions,  a  silver-heresy  is  evil  to  a  gold- 
orthodoxy,  or  in  general  fiatism  to  metalism; 
pleasure-seeking  is  evil  to  asceticism;  reckless, 
unskilled  labor,  to  thoughtless  and  masterful 
capital;  adultery,  to  marriage  under  the  law; 
murder,  to  hanging;  gambling,  to  revelation 
and  miracle;  thieving,  to  business  "honesty;" 
talent,  to  genius;  leisure,  to  industry;  theory, 
to  practice;  "Christian"  science,  to  material 
or  "physical"  science;  profanity,  to  cant; 
barbarian,  to  Greek;  Jew,  to  Christian.  Sim- 
ply the  life  of  society  can  not  bring  or  involve 
these  differences  without  having  them  depend- 


228  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

ent  on  each  other  and  intrinsic  to  each  other. 
When  in  history,  political  or  economical,  the- 
ological or  moral,  have  the  good  in  society 
condemned  the  bad  without  finding  themselves 
condemned  also?  The  good  are  indeed  the 
saviours  of  society,  but  only  as  they  find  its 
sins  in  themselves.  And  when  have  the  bad 
approved  the  good  without  finding  themselves 
approved  also?  The  bad  do  indeed  share  in 
the  salvation,  for  a  self-condemned  society 
always  forgives  their  sinfulness  and  takes 
them  to  itself. 

That  the  law-abiding  are  parties  to  the 
transgression  in  the  life  of  society  and  the 
transgressors  to  the  lawfulness  is  an  idea  that 
is  too  true  to  the  spirit  of  our  times  not  to  be 
recognized  and  accepted  as  soon  as  it  has  been 
clearly  stated.  Aside  from  the  fact  that  ever 
since  Christ  was  declared  to  have  saved  his 
fellows  by  taking  their  sins — idolatry,  for 
example,  murder,  dishonor  of  parents,  and 
adultery — upon  himself  and  glorifying  them,* 
society  has  felt  with  a  growing  keenness  that 
responsibility  both  for  the  evil  and  the  good  is 
social  as  well  as  individual,  it  is  interesting  to 

*  Witness  the  divinity,  crucifixion,  ministry,  and  immacu- 
late conception. 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  229 

reflect  in  how  many  ways  the  social  classes 
today  that  live  in  the  law  are  recognizing  and 
confessing  their  actual  participation  in  the 
deeds  of  such  as  offend  and  how  the  offenders 
are  even  making  claims  to  righteousness. 
Why,  saviour  and  malefactor  are  as  dependent 
today,  as  much  involved  in  each  other  or  as 
necessarily  associated,  as  at  the  hour  of  the 
Crucifixion.  What  malefactor  has  not  saved 
his  fellows  by  taking  their  sins  upon  himself! 
And  what  wonder  that  the  life,  the  social  func- 
tion of  the  malefactor  became  idealized! 

Yes,  to  the  malefactor,  the  transgressor^ 
there  belongs  a  function  in  the  life  of  society, 
which  is  commensurate  only  with  that  of  the 
leader  or  reformer,  and  the  truth  is  that  no 
fact  needs  to  be  appreciated  more  fully  than 
this  by  the  philosopher  who  would  understand 
history.  Surely  real  leaders  are  transgressors 
always.  The  very  authority  or  sovereignty  of 
a  king  lies  in  the  principle  that  he  **can  do  no 
wrong;"  and,  just  as  a  king  has  to  be  exempt 
in  this  way,  so  a  pope  has  to  be  infallible,  a 
political  leader  irresponsible  and  arbitrary,  and 
even  a  god  licentious  or  miracle-working. 
Some  centuries  ago  the  notorious  House  of 
Stuart  saved  puritan  England;  and  in  all  ages 


230  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

lawless  gods  have  made  their  sinful  worship^ 
pers  lawful. 

Now  whenever  extremes  are  made  to  meet, 
as  we  are  here  making  the  transgressor  and  the 
reformer  meet,  it  seems  at  first  as  if  life  were 
losing  its  very  foundations.  Who  has  not  had 
a  sense  of  unreality  upon  learning  that  at  best 
cold  and  hot  differed  only  in  degree.?  In  the 
end,  however,  the  meeting  of  extremes  is  found 
to  establish  instead  of  overthrow.  Thus,  to  be 
able  to  see  leadership  or  reform  even  in  trans- 
gression is  to  make  the  life  of  mankind  any- 
thing but  hopeless,  even  in  its  worst  conditions. 
The  reformer  appears  as  one  who  does  but 
apply  ideally  or  reflectively  the  natural  func- 
tion of  the  transgressor;  he  sanctifies  the  break- 
ing of  the  law.  Hence  his  sympathy  and 
charity  for  his  offending  contemporaries.  And 
the  transgressor  only  unwittingly,  that  is, 
naturally  rather  than  morally  or  spiritually 
serves  his  fellows.  What  the  transgressor 
does  in  fact  the  reformer  does  also  in  act. 
The  transgressor  unintentionally  makes  public 
the  private  life  of  his  fellows,  his  crime  being 
their  vice;  his  thieving,  to  recall  some  exam- 
ples already  given,  being  an  exposure  or  even 
a  parody  of  their  ' '  honesty, ' '  or  his  adultery, 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  231 

of  their  lawful  marriage,  or  his  profanity,  of 
their  cant,  or  his  murder,  of  their  capital  pun- 
ishment; and  so  doing  he  reveals  them  to 
themselves  and  even  by  his  punishment  effects 
their  self-condemnation.  And  what  is  this 
but  unconscious  leadership  or  unconscious  re- 
form? The  reformer  is  only  the  idealized 
transgressor;  the  transgressor,  as  it  were,  made 
useful  or  brought  under  control. 

And  no  conclusion  from  this  relation  of  the 
transgressor  to  the  reformer  can  be  more  sig- 
nificant than  that  which  has  really  been  in  our 
minds  all  along.  Neither  the  good  nor  the 
evil  is  a  determined  thing.  Neither  is  the 
endowment,  the  original  virtue  or  the  original 
sin,  of  any  person  or  class,  of  any  act  or  any 
way  of  living.  This  is  repetition,  but  I  say 
again  that  in  the  case  of  the  different  acts  of 
an  individual  or  in  the  case  of  the  lives  of  the 
different  members  or  classes  of  society  all  are 
good  and  bad  together.  To  separate  the  good 
and  the  evil  is  to  justify  the  latter  and  condemn 
the  former.  Can  a  man  divide  his  own  life.'* 
The  life  of  society — is  it  not  organic.-* 

That  the  appearance  of  the  transgressor  as 
well  as  the  appearance  of  his  natural  contem- 
porary the  reformer  is  an  incident  of  the  alien- 


232  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

ation  of  society  from  itself  all  but  goes  without 
saying.  Both  transgression  and  reform  are 
alienation.  To  this  relationship,  however, 
attention  will  be  called  in  a  later  chapter. 

But  here  we  have  to  consider  a  fact  that  in 
its  first  statement  may  seem  quite  unintelligible 
and  yet  that  does  but  afford  an  illustration  of 
what  has  been  said  above.  Thus,  the  conflict 
of  good  and  evil  is  identical  with  that  of  the 
organic  and  the  mechanical,  or  politically  of 
democracy  and  monarchy;  for  the  monarch, as 
already  suggested,  is  both  a  leader  and  a  trans- 
gressor. Indeed  leadership  with  its  inseparable 
incidents  of  transgression  and  liberation  must 
be  recognized  as  very  much  more  than  the  life 
and  authority  of  any  single  individual.  It  be- 
longs to  every  member  of  the  organic  whole. 
**Any  single  individual"  is  every  individual, 
or,  exactly  as  democracy  would  have  it,  all 
individuals  are  monarchs.  Democracy  is  only 
a  universalized,  a  fulfilled  monarchy.  In  it 
the  monarch's,  the  leader's,  the  transgressor's 
function  is  everybody's.  It  would  give  to  every 
individual  person  something  peculiar  to  do, 
something  upon  which  others  must  not  en- 
croach, something  which  is  his  right  but  their 
wrong;  and  this,  because  individuality,  identi- 


GOOD  AND  EVIL.  233 

cal  with  leadership,  depends  on  the  assumption 
of  some  special  activity  in  an  organic  life.  Or, 
again,  a  truly  democratic  society  cannot  but  be 
an  organism,  and  the  life  of  an  organism  in- 
volves what  in  the  industrial  world  is  known  as 
division  of  labor,  but  division  of  labor  means 
that  in  some  one  line,  in  some  one  relation  to 
the  whole,  each  laborer,  each  person,  is  monarch- 
ically  and  imperially  supreme,  being  capable 
of  doing  no  wrong  therein  and  so  redeeming 
his  fellows  for  their  own  peculiar  activities  from 
the  sinfulness  of  his. 

So,  finally  and  in  summary,  are  the  evil  and 
the  good  not  two  but  one;  being  two,  only 
because  society  comes  into  conflict  with  itself, 
but  one,  because,  in  an  organic  society  the 
separate  parts  or  the  separated  activities  are 
necessarily  functions  of  each  other,  mutually 
dependent  and  inclusive,  each  being  invisibly 
what  the  other  is  visibly.* 

*  Perhaps  in  a  note  one  may  allow  himself  to  indulge  in 
fancies.  The  imagery,  moreover,  accompanying  thought  pro- 
cesses is  of  peculiar  interest,  at  least  to  psychologists,  at  the 
present  time.  Persistent,  then,  throughout  these  pages,  and 
particularly  vivid  whenever  I  have  come  to  recognize  the  or- 
ganic relation  of  the  implicit  to  the  explicit  or  of  the  invisi- 
ble to  the  visible,  has  been  the  image  or  the  idea  of  the 
relation  of  light  and  darkness,  day  and  night,  in  th«  earth's 
motion  with  reference  to  the  sun.  The  good  and  evil,  for  ex- 
ample, seem  to  be  one  exactly  as  day  and  night  are  one.  Of 
course  for  a  monistic  philosophy  an  analogy  between  the  spir- 
itual and  the  physical  should  be  discoverable,  and  psychologi- 
cally imagery  is  aiways  more  than  mere  imagery. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

REVOLUTION. 

P\EVOLUTION,  so  intimately  associated 
*^  with  the  conflict  of  rehgion  and  reason, 
or  again  with  the  conflict  of  good  and  evil,  is 
the  natural  outcome  of  alienation.  It  is  a 
forerunner  of  restoration.  It  is  manifested  evo- 
lution. It  is  a  return  to  nature;  the  natural 
active  in  the  human;  the  human  lost  in  the 
natural  and  become  a  mere  tool.  It  is  at  once 
man's  restoration  or  redemption  and  the 
change  or  even  the  destruction  of  his  political 
and  geographical  devices.  In  short,  it  is  man 
entering  into  a  new  humanity. 

Historians  are  disposed  to  look  to  France  for 
evidence  of  the  nature  of  revolution.  France 
seems  like  the  laboratory  of  a  people  that  is 
over-fond  of  sensational  experiments,  of  explo- 
sions and  other  startling  changes.  But  what  is 
to  be  seen  in  France  underlies  all  life  or  all 
history.  For  example,  politically,  England 
and  France  are  often  contrasted  as  if  they 
were  such  extremes  as  cold  and   heat,  but  as 


REVOLUTION.  235 

cold  and  heat  are  manifestations  of  one  law  to 
the  scientist,  so  England  and  France  can  show 
only  one  process  to  the  historian. 

In  general,  then,  the  most  obvious  cause  of 
revolution,  if  any  one  cause  can  be  selected,  is 
the  formalism  that  comes  with  a  society's 
alienation  from  itself.  Formalism  involves 
mechanicalism  and  mechanicalism  always  puts 
into  the  hands  of  society  a  tool,  as  if  a  club, 
with  which  to  knock  over  the  existing  institu- 
tions. Witness  the  struggle,  which  it  brings, 
between  dogmatic  unspiritual  theism  and  athe- 
ism, or  between  purely  conventional  morality 
and  sensualism,  or  between  unpatriotic  or  only 
outwardly  patriotic  Bourbonism  and  anarchy. 

Too  much  has  been  said  already  to  leave  the 
meaning  here  very  much  in  doubt.  Long  ago 
we  saw  how  the  penitent  outgrows  the  confes- 
sional and  becomes  ever  more  personally  con- 
scientious, and  again  how  religion,  turning 
dogmatic,  gives  rise  to  science,  and  how  mon- 
archy develops  democracy;  and  in  each  of  these 
cases  is  evidence  of  revolution;  in  each  the 
past  becomes  a  tool  for  the  overthrow  of  the 
present;  in  each  conventionalism  or  formalism 
appears  as  only  the  other  side  of  lawlessness. 

Conventionalism,  or  formalism,  is  tradition- 


236  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTOPY. 

alism,  the  worship  of  the  letter  of  the  past, 
and  the  conflict  of  a  revolution  is  just  that  of 
traditionalism,  which  idolatrously  separates 
the  past  from  the  present,  and  idealism,  which 
concerns  itself  with  an  wholly  abstract  future. 
But  when  traditionalism  and  idealism  cross 
swords,  it  is  as  if  each  had  found  only  a  con- 
demning exposure  of  itself  in  the  other  and  in 
the  outcome  it  may  even  be  that  the  opponents 
change  places.  Traditionalism  by  the  very 
abstraction  that  it  makes,  by  its  indifference  to 
the  present,  sanctions  change;  so  to  speak,  it 
lets  nature  take  its  course;  and  nature  taking 
its  course  is  the  process,  exactly,  with  which 
an  abstract  or  irresponsible  idealism  identifies 
itself.  Nothing  is  quite  so  significant  to  an 
understanding  of  revolution  as  the  way  in 
which  even  so  violent  a  change  as  death,  the 
death  of  sacrifice  or  the  death  of  execution,  is 
never  without  sanction  from  either  side. 
Abstraction  of  either  past  or  future  makes 
death  to  the  present  something  that  is  even  to 
be  courted  instead  of  feared.  The  traditional- 
ist already  is  in  another  world,  while  the 
idealist  has  not  yet  entered  this. 

Do  I  seem  to  make  it  a  matter  of  indifference 
on  which  side  in  a  revolutionary  conflict  one 


REVOLUTION.  lyj 

happens  to  be?  By  making  the  opponents  so 
in  agreement  with  each  other,  nay,  so  inclu- 
sive of  each  other,  by  showing  them  to  be  co- 
operative even  in  their  opposition,  do  I  seem 
to  take  all  the  meaning  out  of  the  conflict 
itself?  If  so,  I  have  not  been  understood. 
Does  the  physicist  give  up  his  faith  in  resist- 
ance, in  impenetrability,  in  force,  or  in  motion, 
because  he  finds  that  action  is  equal  to  reac- 
tion? On  the  contrary  the  equation  comes  as 
a  justification  of  his  scientific  faith,  and  in  like 
manner  co-operation  in  conflict  makes  conflict 
more  real,  not  less  real.  When  in  history  has 
there  been  a  struggle  in  which  justice  was  not 
as  much  on  one  side  as  on  the  other?  The 
historian  is  constantly  recognizing  this.  For- 
giving enemies,  however,  by  finding  them 
justified,  never  makes  the  battles  less  signifi- 
cant, or  less  glorious.  It  only  gives  to  all 
involved  a  share  in  the  results,  just  as  all  had 
had  a  share  in  the  inducing  conditions.  Con- 
flict does  indeed  depend  on  differences,  but  the 
differences  do  not  exclude  each  other.  When 
battle  is  on,  an  organic  life  has  come  into  open 
conflict  with  itself,  and  all  are  at  once  friends 
and  enemies  to  each  other  and  to  themselves. 
No,  I  am  very  certainly  not  making  conflict 


238  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

meaningless;  I  am  making  it  real;  I  am  making 
it  consistent  with  a  substantial  progress. 

But,  lastly,  does  the  conflict  of  revolution 
involve  a  resort  to  militarism  ?  To  me,  con- 
fessedly, this  is  a  relatively  unimportant  ques- 
tion, although  others,  out  of  regard  to  present 
day  controversies,  to  present  day  aspirations, 
will  think  differently.  There  are  many  who 
have  become  fond  of  dreaming  of  "peaceful 
revolutions, ' '  who  like,  perhaps,  to  talk  of  an 
**  industrial ' '  as  distinct  from  a  military  revo- 
lution, or  find  comfort  in  the  cry  *  *  Evolution, 
not  revolution;*'  but  surely  no  thinker,  or  let 
me  say  no  real  worker  can  deny  or  even  wish 
to  deny  conflict  to  the  future.  A  * '  peaceful 
revolution ' '  is  not  possible,  and  a  future  with- 
out revolution  might  as  well  be  past.  But  it 
is  possible,  indeed  it  even  seems  probable,  that 
militarism  is  passing  away.  Disarmament  is 
no  longer  unthinkable,  for  our  times  are  mani- 
festing the  development  of  noteworthy  checks 
to  the  resort  to  arms.  To  enumerate  these  is 
hardly  necessary,  but  here  they  are  in  part. 
Internationalism,  democracy,  industrialism  are 
checks  that  are  growing  in  effectiveness.  War, 
too,  is  becoming  too  dangerous,  and  no  one 
can  doubt  that  the  more  terrible  its  instruments 


REVOLUTIOlsr,  239 

are,  the  less  likely  is  their  use.  Then  the 
changing  views  of  property  and  the  absence  of 
undiscovered  and  unclaimed  territory  are  other 
checks  to  warfare.  So  such  as  dream  of  evo- 
lution without  revolution  or  of  peaceful  revo- 
lution may  be  concerned  with  a  half-truth,  but, 
whatever  is  in  store  for  the  military  way  of 
expressing  force  through  human  nature,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  there  is  conflict  ahead; 
hard,  earnest,  revolutionary  conflict;  progres- 
sive conflict;  conflict  that  can  not  fail  to  de- 
stroy because  it  will  be  bent  on  fulfilling. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  GREAT    MAN. 

TTS  this  book  draws  to  a  close,  it  almost  seems 
'*  as  if  an  explanation,  I  might  even  say  a 
justification  of  the  great  man  had  been  the 
motive  from  the  beginning.  Such  influential 
writers  as  Herbert  Spencer  on  the  one  hand  and 
W.  H.  Mallock  on  the  other  seem  to  me  to 
have  either  unduly  belittled  or  fatally  exalted 
the  great  man's  relation  to  society  and  social 
growth,  and  in  consequence  I  must  regard  it  a 
peculiarly  interesting  and  valuable  service  to 
history  and  political  science  to  show  what  the 
relation  really  is.  Possibly — and  I  am  by  no 
means  insensible  to  this  possibility — my  own 
view  may  be  found  inadequate,  but  even  ambi- 
tious thinkers  have  to  take  risks.  Success  is 
only  for  those  who  dare  to  fail. 

So,  to  face  at  once  the  danger  of  failure,  the 
great  man  is  an  individual;  he  is  pre-eminently 
an  individual;  and  his  individuality  must  surely 
be  true  to  the  conditions  of  individuality  in 
general.     Thus,  he   must   really  share  in  the 


THE  GREAT  MAN.  241 

causation  of  the  social  life.  His  consciousness 
and  his  activity  must  be  also  the  social  con- 
sciousness and  the  social  activity.  He  must  be 
an  application  of  force,  peculiarly  of  social 
force,  or — as  the  same  thing — the  liberation  and 
individuation,  the  focusing  of  an  activity  actual 
in  the  social  life.  Furthermore,  he  must  have 
for  his  motive  exactly  that  upon  which  his  ex- 
istence depends,  namely,  a  relation,  an  organic 
relation  to  the  life  that  encompasses  him. 
Repetition,  then,  or  imitation  can  not  at  any 
moment,  be  his  interest,  nor  on  the  other  hand, 
whether  in  his  consciouness  or  in  his  activity, 
can  mere  eccentricity,  mere  isolation,  have  ideal 
value  for  him.  As  just  said,  he  naturally  seeks 
an  organic  relation;  he  seeks  the  expression  of 
just  what  he  is;  so  that  both  unity  and  differ- 
ence, both  imitation  and  invention  are  control- 
ling interests  in  whatever  he  does.  And  these 
are  not  two  interests  of  course,  but  one  and  in- 
separable, since  in  life  that  is  organic  unity  and 
differences  are  intrinsic  to  each  other. 

In  earlier  pages  we  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  for  evolution  or  for  history  consciousness 
and  life,  or  thought  and  action,  whether  in  the 
single  individual  or  in  society,  are  not  merely 
coextensive  but   also  essential  to  each  other, 


^42  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

each  being  at  once  a  condition  and  a  result  of 
the  other,  and  we  concluded  also,  with  special 
regard  to  the  incidents  of  social  development, 
that  conscious  activity  induces  alienation.  A 
people,  in  other  words,  in  so  far  as  active  and 
conscious,  is  always  in  some  measure  beside 
itself,  living  another  life  than  what  appears  at 
least  to  casual  observation  to  be  its  actual  life. 
There  can  be  no  conscious  activity,  no  organic 
social  life,  if  a  motive  to  otherness,  a  principle 
of  differentiation,  is  not  present.  Moreover 
this  motive  or  principle,  is  no  mere  abstract 
sentiment.  It  is  no. shadowy  unreality.  It  is 
no  purely  formal  principle  of  logic.  On  the 
contrary,  from  the  beginning,  it  is  an  activity 
as  well  as  a  sentiment,  a  concrete  condition  as 
well  as  an  idea.  It  is  an  activejsocial  force  which 
is  as  necessary  to  the  life  of  society  as  the  more 
conservative  interest  in  self-preservation,  since 
it  brings,  not  mere  preservation,  but  realization, 
fulfilment,  evolution. 

And  what  have  individuality  and  greatness  to 
do  with  it  ?  IndividuaHty  and  greatness  are 
dependent  upon  it  or  may  even  be  identified 
with  it.  Thus,  in  the  first  place,  individuality 
and  greatness  are  different,  perhaps,  but  as 
already  implied  they  are  not  different  in  kind; 


THE  GREAT  MAN.  243 

and,  in  the  second  place,  the  individuality  that 
is  great  belongs  always  to  the  time  in  a  society's 
life  when  alienation  is  extreme.  By  a  principle, 
too,  which  is  not  less  psychological  and  socio- 
logical than  logical,  greatness  tends  to  stand 
alone,  to  inhere  in  a  single  individual.  The 
greatest  man  is  the  sole  representative  of  the 
otherness,  of  the  other  life,  that  his  fellows  in 
the  way  of  being  beside  themselves  have  come 
to  lead.  Do  you  ask  why }  Would  you  know 
the  principle.?  Singleness,  then,  is  necessary 
to  free  expression,  to  clear  and  complete  reve- 
lation, to  conviction.  It  shows,  and  only  it  can 
show  the  alienation  to  be  at  its  limit.  Is  the 
alienation  partial  and  only  in  process  }  Then 
there  is  a  number  of  great  men.  Is  it,  on  the 
other  hand,  complete }  There  is  but  one  great 
man,  a  solitary  but  a  convincing  and  a  con- 
victing witness. 

But  the  othernesss  that  makes  greatness  like 
the  otherness  that  makes  individuality  must  be 
at  one  as  well  as  at  variance  with  the  environ- 
ment; the  individual,  and  particularly  the  great 
individual,  must  somehow  belong  to  his  times 
even  while  he  seems  aloof;  else,  to  say  the 
least,  a  philosophy  of  history  can  have  nothing 
to  do  with  him  and  his  greatness.    How,  then, 


244  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

can  these  two  conditions  be  realized  ?  To  say 
that  all  organic  life  involves  them  is  to  speak 
truly  enough  and  it  is  to  say  all  that  is  neces- 
sary so  far  as  the  mere  principle  goes,  but  it  is 
too  much  of  a  formula  here  to  be  altogether 
satisfactory.  And  hardly  more  satisfactory  is 
the  statement  that  at  a  time  when  society  is 
thoroughly  alienated  from  itself  the  alien  char- 
acter of  the  great  man  must,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  be  expressive  of  a  perfectly  genuine 
adaptation.  This,  too,  is  true  and  sufficient  in 
itself,  but  we  can  be  still  more  direct  and  still 
more  definite.  Summarily,  then,  the  relation 
of  the  great  man  to  his  contemporaries  is  that 
of  end  to  means,  or  of  future  to  past. 

This  calls  for  explanation,  but  the  explana- 
tion is  at  hand.  As  has  been  shown  here,  the 
process  of  alienation  involves  the  development 
of  formalism  or  let  us  say  of  a  conservatism 
that  is  formal  in  exact  proportion  as  it  is  con- 
servative or  merely  traditional,  and  such  a 
development  shows  the  life  of  a  people,  or 
more  strictly  speaking,  the  institutions  of  all 
sorts  with  which  the  life  has  been  identified, 
losing  their  ideal  or  intrinsic  value  and  becom- 
ing the  mere  material  instrument  of  a  new  life. 
Thus,  to  give  an  example  already  familiar  to 


THE  GREAT  MAN.  245 

US,  patriotism  and  political  unity  or  continuity 
pass  into  cosmopolitanism  and  political  disinte- 
gration, the  people  becoming  utilitarian  even 
in  the  regard  of  their  state  and  its  forms  and 
institutes.  A  formal  allegiance  persists  of 
course;  it  persists,  until  it  is  purely  empty 
or  formal,  until  alienation  is  complete;  with 
completion  it  avows  its  treachery,  throwing  off 
the  disguise.  With  completion,  however,  the 
great  man  also  appears,  being  only  the  visible 
symbol  or  exponent,  the  active  agent  of  the 
end  to  which  the  traditional  life  is  the  already 
adapted  or  developed  means.  So  came  Socra- 
tes to  the  Greeks,  and  Christ  to  the  Jews. 

Traditionalism  is  in  effect  treating  the  means 
to  life,  as  if  it  were  the  end.  It  is  then,  acting 
in. or  for  the  future  but  looking  at  the  past.  In 
short,  a  sort  of  advancing  backward  or  a  dis- 
guised radicalism.  Psychologically — and  this 
is  a  most  important  fact — it  prepares  a  peo- 
ple for  some  particular  function  or  service  in 
the  larger  life  into  which  they  are  entering; 
for  a  function  or  service  that  they  finally  recog- 
nize and  appropriate  with  the  life  of  the  great 
man  among  them.  Witness  the  development 
of  the  Greeks,  after  the  time  of  Socrates,  into 
imperial  soldiers,  and  of    the  Jews,  after  the 


246  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

time  of  Christ,  into  money-lenders  and  bankers. 
Alienation  turned  Greek  traditionalism  into 
militarism,  and  Hebrew  traditionalism  into 
banking.  * 

Besides  putting  the  past  into  use,  or  say  be- 
sides developing  formalism  and  eventually  mak- 
ing it  instrumental,  greatness  realizes  or  antic- 
ipates the  future.  The  great  man  is  progress 
incarnate.  He  contemporizes  the  past  and  the 
future  with  the  present.  Being  the  fully  defined, 
the  revealed  and  the  individuated  life  of  his 
people,  he  both  realizes  their  past  and  expres- 
ses their  future  in  his  own  career.  They  be- 
come his  followers,  doing  socially  what  he  has 
done  individually.  The  very  nature  of  his  birth 
insures  the  repetition  of  his  career  in  the  life 
that  includes  him,  his  revealed  achievement 
necessarily  becoming  its  motive. 

And  the  great  man  as  progress  incarnate,  as 
one  in  whom  both  the  past  is  fulfilled  and  the 
future  is  anticipated,  is  a  witness  to  will  and 
motive  and  individual  responsibility  in  history, 
in  social  evolution.  Thus,  to  keep  the  supreme 
illustrations,  Socrates  showed  the  Greek  vic- 

*In  Citizenship  and  Salvation^  already  referred  to,  I  have 
developed  the  idea  of  the  last  two  or  three  paragraphs  and  of 
several  that  follow,  at  considerable  length.  Hence  my  brevity 
at  this  time. 


THE  GREAT  MAN.  247 

torious  over  himself  before  the  final  conquest 
by  Rome,  and  Christ  *  *  took  captivity  captive. ' ' 
With  such  anticipations  of  history  to  testify 
against  it  determinism  can  get  no  hold  upon 
the  mind  of  the  historian,  and  in  general  indi- 
viduality is  made  synonymous  with  a  genuine 
freedom  or  with  a  truly  moral  responsibility. 

So  we  see  the  great  man.  He  is  the  spirit 
of  his  people  liberated  and  embodied,  as  they 
are  separated  from  themselves;  the  master  of 
their  past;  the  prophet  of  their  future;  a  ver- 
itable mediator,  in  whom  alienation  and  resto- 
ration meet  and  are  identified;  in  fine,  the  in- 
dividual always  pre-eminent  and  supreme. 

But  at  least  two  things  more  ought  to  be 
said,  and  the  first  of  these  is  that  greatness — 
or  genius — is  not  talent.  Genius  and  talent 
are  indeed  dependent  upon  each  other  '  *  psy- 
chologically and  sociologically ; ' '  but,  as  even 
common  opinion  has  always  recognized,  they 
are  quite  distinct.  Thus,  the  Sophists  and  the 
Jews  had  talent,  but  Socrates  and  Christ  had 
genius.  Talent  is  conservative,  traditional, 
lawful;  genius  is  free.  Talent  is  time-serving, 
genius,  independent.  Talent  uses;  genius  in- 
vents.  Talent  formulates;  genius  discovers  and 


248  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTOR  V. 

reveals.     Talent  worships  and  follows;  genius 
leads.     Talent  alienates  ;  genius  restores. 

And,  secondly  and  lastly,  the  greatest  genius 
is  a  religious  leader.  This  does  but  follow  from 
all  that  has  been  said.  Nay,  it  is  a  virtual  rep- 
etition, for  above  we  saw  how  logical,  or  how 
true  to  history  Rome's  identification  of  religion 
and  leadership  became.  The  monarch  was  also 
the  God,  the  Incarnate  Spirit  of  another  world; 
and  his  subjects,  at  once  soldiers  and  disciples. 
Jurisprudence  and  art  and  science  and  philoso- 
phy, the  stages  in  order  of  the  thought  that 
accompanies  a  society's  alienation  from  itself, 
have  their  great  men,  but  also  their  great  men 
are  never  without  company.  The  number  in 
the  group  of  the  great  may  diminish  as  the 
stages  succeed  each  other  and  with  the  dimi- 
nution the  greatness  may  increase,  but  the  num- 
ber is  never  one  and  the  greatness  is  never 
supreme  till  the  alienation,  which  brings  con- 
viction of  another  world,  is  at  its  limit.  When, 
however,  the  number  is  one,  the  divine  is  man- 
ifest in  the  human,  the  other  world  is  brought 
into  this. 


CONCLUSION. 

TO  summarize  the  foregoing  pages,  in  order 
to  draw  their  moral,  is  all  that  remains 
for  us  to  do. 

Here,  then,  is  the  summary,  unnecessary, 
perhaps,  but  not  altogether  without  use.  His- 
tory is  the  liberation  of  human  society,  as  an 
organism  organically  related  to  nature,  in  its 
own  realized  law.  Realization  of  the  law  is 
through  the  development  of  individuals,  nations 
and  persons,  with  all  the  incidents  of  alienation 
and  restoration,  of  evil  and  good,  of  science 
and  religion,  of  talent  and  genius,  that  have 
been  found  to  be  involved.  And  the  individ- 
uals developed  are  agents  of  a  genuine  progress, 
since  the  very  essence  of  individuality  is  at 
once  adaptation  or  fulffllment  of  the  past  and 
realization  of  the  future. 

And,  as  for  the  moral  to  be  drawn,  I  can 
content  myself  with  just  a  word  or  two.  His- 
tory is  no  mere  logical  scheme.  It  is  no  body 
of  knowledge  to  be  learned  and  recited.  It  is 
no  entertaining  story  to  be  read  and  then  for- 


250  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY. 

gotten  or,  if  perhaps  remembered,  retained  as 
but  the  tool  of  some  teacher's  trade  or  the  or- 
nament of  some  gentleman's  culture.  And, 
finally,  it  is  no  fatal  process  external  to  human 
passion  and  human  will.  But  what  is  it  then.!* 
History  is  the  experience,  the  very  life  itself, 
which  we  call  our  own.  To  adopt  the  familiar 
formula  of  the  sages  of  the  East:  The  history 
of  human  society — that  art  thou!  Its  past  } 
No.  Its  future  }  No.  What }  Its  living,  all- 
including  present. 


INDEX. 


NDEX. 


NoTK.— The  following  index  is  intended  to  be  rather  topical  than 
verbal,  so  that  in  many  cases  the  literal  words  will  not  be  found  on 
the  pages  referred  to. 


Alexander,  162,  165. 
Alienation,  76,  125,  126,  134, 
142, 143  sq.,  155,  201,  204, 

215, 
America,  37,  44,  51,  73,  122, 

127,  141,  200. 
Antiquarism,   150. 
Approval,  225  sq. 
Architecture,   199,  217, 
Art,   155,  157  sq.,   200,219. 
Artisans,  155,  161. 

Bank,  190,  193,  246. 
Barbarian,   122,  198,  227. 
Berkeley,  62. 
Bruno,  187. 

Calculus,  187. 
Capital,  140,  142. 
Cartesians,   187. 
Catholicism,  174,  180,  198. 
Causation,  37  sq.,  46,  53  n., 

55- 
Chance,  25,  42,  217. 
Change,  50,  53. 
China,   125. 

Christ,   79,  228,  245,  247. 
Christendom,    79,    172,    184, 

202. 
Christianity,  51,  79,  127,  141, 

I55»  175.  192,  207. 
Christian  Science,  227. 


Church,  25,  173,  198. 
Citizenship  and  Salvation,  159, 

192,  246. 
City,   145,  147,  167,  212. 
Coexistence,  29,  32,  46,  84, 

129. 
Coin,   135,  142,  191,  193. 
Columbus,  37,  44,  51,  73. 
Communication,   149,  189. 
Condemnation,  225  sq. 
Conflict,  56,  88  sq.,  123,  216, 

238. 
Conquest,   165. 
Consciousness,  31,  6t,  65,  72, 

80,  87. 
Consciousness,  social,  109. 
Contemporaneity,  15,  34,  40, 

44»  53.  56,  85,  93,  128,  151, 

I79f  246. 
Control,  86 sq.,  146,  151,  2H. 
Cosmopolitanism,    126,    154, 

161,  213,  245. 
Country,  145,  147,  212. 
Creation,  33,  38,  55. 
Credit,   138,  142,  194  sq. 
Crime,  118. 

Deduction,  183. 
Democracy,     138,    141,    142, 

171,  232. 
Descartes,   184. 
Determinism,  73. 


INDEX. 


Dewey,  86  n. 
Differentiation,    47,    6g,    99, 

144,  169. 
Discovery  of  America,  200. 
Division  of  labor,  145. 
Dogmatism,   193,  218. 
Domain  or  territory,  121,  135, 

142,  239. 
Dynamic  Idealism,  25,  36,  48, 

147. 

Earth,  37,  52. 
Eastern  Question,  206  sq. 
Endowment  -  theory,   32,  60, 

100,  III. 
England,  234. 
Environment,  29,  33  sq,,    54, 

74,  85,  89,  113. 
Epiphenomenality,  31,  62,  63. 
Equity,  142,  197. 
Eternal,  27. 
Europe,  51,  141,  176. 
Events,  24,  26. 
Evil,  222  sq. 
Evolution,'3osq.,  77,  82,  203, 

217. 
Exchange,  173,  189,  190. 

Factory,  190,  193. 
Fatalism,  155,  162. 
Feudalism,  182. 
Fiatism,  193. 

Formalism,  125,  235,  244. 
France,  234. 
Function,  Organic,  67. 
Future,  33,  35,  40,  128. 

Galileo,  187. 

Genius,  85,  227,  240 sq.,  247. 

Gentile,  122. 

Good,  222  sq. 

Government,  134,  142. 

Gravity,  100,  loi. 

Great  Man,  The,  78,  240  sq. 

Greek,  122,  125,127,  133,141, 

I55>  165,  202,  227. 
Groot,  Hugo  de,  176. 
Group,  97  sq. 


Group,  human,  or  society,  103 
sq. 

Heat,  38,  50,  72. 
Hegel,   16. 
Heraclitus,  201. 
Heresy,   193. 

History,    11  sq.,    43,  56,  77, 
92,  97,  130,  211,  222,  249. 
History  of  Philosophy,  16. 
Hobbes,  116. 

Idealism,  198,  236. 

Imitation,  241. 

Imperialism,   162,    171,    175, 

181. 
Immortality,  76. 
Individualism,  103,  116,  188. 
Individuality,  40,  59  sq.,  65, 

82,  89,  132  sq.,  142. 
Individuation,    68,   78,     120, 

143,  240,  241. 
Induction,  183. 
Industrialism,   139,  142,  171, 

182,  189,  193,  238. 
Infinitesimal,  186,  189. 
Inheritance,  136,  142,  196. 
Inorganic,  60,  84. 
Internationalism,     171,     175, 

176,  181. 
Invasion,  198. 
Invention,  241. 

Jew,  122,  202,  227,  245,  247. 
Judea,  199,  206. 

Kant,  62,  185  n. 
Kepler,  187. 
King,  173. 

Labor  or  laborer,  132,  142, 
145,  151,  152,  173,  177, 
190. 

Latin,  173,  176. 

Law,  45,  91,   135,  138,   142, 

155.  157- 
Law,  International,  176,  197. 
Lawfulness,  223  sq. 


INDEX. 


Ill 


Lawlessness,  223  sq. 
Leadership,   i6g,  230,  232. 
Leibnitz,  187,  188. 
Leisure,  151  sq.,  227. 
Leisured  class,  145,  151,  212. 
Life    and    consciousness,  65, 

82,  241. 
Literature,  133,  136,  140,142. 
Localization,  144. 

Machinery,  142,  173. 
Mallock,  240. 

Man,  The  Great,    78,  240 sq. 
Materialism,  58,  73. 
Mathematics,  153,  185,  189. 
Mechanic,  137,  142. 
Mechanicalization,   178,    182, 

188,  235. 
Mediterannean,  51,  206. 
Memory,  33,  203. 
Metalism,  193. 
Michigan,   University  of,   37, 

38,  52. 
Militarism,  142,  169,171,  189, 

238. 
Milton,  199. 
Miracle,  25,  217. 
Monarch,    25,   112,  133,  142, 

171*  232. 
Money,  135. 
Motion,  49. 

Nationalism,  173,  175,181. 
Nativists,  61. 
Naturalism,  155. 
Naturalization  of    the  super- 
natural, 142,  197. 
Nature,  54 sq,.   120. 
Newton,  187. 

Occident,  127,  207. 
Officials,  151. 
Opinion,  Public,   114. 
Organic  function,  67. 
Organism,  23,  35,  36,  47,  75, 
84,  86 sq  ,  98 sq.,  104, 189. 
Orient,  127,  206. 


Painting,  199. 
Papacy,  112,  173. 
Parthians,   150. 
Past,  15,  33,  35,  40,  128. 
Patriarchism,  133,  142. 
Patriotism,  154,  245. 
Pericles,  155. 

Philosopher,  155,  162,  215. 
Philosophy,  History  of,  16. 
Pilgrimage,  199. 
Politician,  155,  161. 
Positivism,  217. 
Present,  15,  40,  128. 
Production,  173,  190. 
Progress,  80 sq.,  93,  200,201 

sq.,   246. 
Property,  133,  135,  138,  191. 
Protestantism,  174,  180,  198, 

199. 
Public  Opinion,  114. 

Rationalists,  61. 
Realism,  150. 
Reason,  211  sq. 
Recapitulation,  34,  204. 
Religion,  133,  136,  142,  155, 

163,  211  sq.,   248. 
Repetition,  202  sq.,  241. 
Restoration,    126,    137,    142, 

168 sq.,  201,  204. 
Revelation,  136,  142. 
Revolution,     124,    154,    155, 

162,  216,  234sq.;  238. 
Rome,    127,    139,    141,    I50> 

155,  172. 
Rousseau,  116. 

Scholasticism,  183. 

Schopenhauer,  62. 

Science,   9,  31,  45,    155,  160 

sq..  217,  227. 
Sensationalists,  61. 
Sequence,  28,  32,  41,  46,  129. 
Servants,  157, 
Smith,  Adam,  188. 
Society,  97,  103. 
Socrates,  155,  166,  245. 


IV 


INDEX. 


Soldier,  134,  142,  173.  I77- 
Sophists,  247. 
Sovereignty,  138,  142. 
Space,  23,  75,  91. 
Spartacus,  179. 
Spencer,  103,  105,  112. 
Spinoza,  42,  187,  195  n. 
Spirit  or  the  spiritual,  26,  57, 

76,  134,  142. 
Spiritualism,  58. 
Stages   of    Social  Evolution, 

I2t),  128,  142. 
State,  173. 

Sun,  as  a  cause,  37,  52, 
Supernatural,  142,  165,  197. 

Talent,  227,  247. 
Thinkers  or    thought,     145, 


151,  211  sq. 

Time,  21  sq.,  75,  85,  91,  203. 

Transgressor  or  transgression, 

118,  228,  232. 
Transportation,  139,  189. 
Travel,  48, 
Territory  or  domain,  121,  135, 

142,  239. 

University  of    Michigan, 

37.  38,  52. 
Unknowable,   107. 

War,  238. 

Will,  136,  246. 

Will,  Social,  109,  115,  138. 

Xerxes,  125. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


7Feb'49qEt 
14Jurf58MN| 


LD  21-100m-9,'48(B399sl6)476 


REC'D  LD 

SEP  1 3  1962 

flNov'64BQ 


U-4M, 


M^ 


Id    «i'Ht54J- 


U-*^ 


/ 


a:^^^  ■- 


261204 


1        * 


